10 words to use only sparingly

Most writing blogs wouldn't use the above title. Instead, they would shriek in capital letters, TEN WORDS YOU MUST NEVER EVER USE!!!! suggesting that if any one of them sneaks into a piece of your writing, even once, fire and brimstone will rain down and no-one will buy any of your books or read your blogs ever again until the end of time.

Far be it from me to be that dictatorial about such things. I don't think the world will end if I leave one or two of them in; but I do think that too many of any of them damages my writing style. Editing my most recent manuscript, I found that the words and phrases listed below tended to crop up a lot. Ninety-nine out of a hundred times I could delete them, which is worth knowing if I'm working to a strict word limit. I'm not, but the initial draft was way too long. In book format it would have amounted to about 600 pages, which, for a novel whose characters are on their first public outing, was way too long.

It's now down to 422, although I can't say I achieved that simply by taking out most occurrences of the below listed words. Most of it was cutting scenes which didn't advance the main story arc (these have been filed away as possible short stories at a later date); writing out some minor characters - (their stories can form part of a later book) and realising I wasn't using my usual font (changing the font alone reduced the page count by about fifty). However, cutting back on most of these unnecessary words and phrases probably lost me two or three pages.

Here are the nine words/phrases that cropped up too often for my liking:

• Then. You're telling a story, it's a sequence of events. You don't need to keep using the word "then". For example: "She walked down the street. Then she saw the dead body in the neighbour's garden. She pushed open the gate and then inspected the corpse. Then her neighbour opened his front door..." sounds better without all the "thens", as "She walked down the street. She saw the dead body in the neighbour's garden. She pushed open the gate and inspected the corpse. Her neighbour opened his front door..." You have to admit it reads better.
• Thought/Felt. "It was cold outside, Tabitha thought." It's enough to say "It was cold outside," especially if you are writing in Tabitha's point of view. It's how she's perceiving the world. It's a fact to her. It is cold. Similarly, "Tabitha felt he wasn't listening to her" becomes "He wasn't listening to her."
• Very. A tad lazy, when you think about it. Rather than use "very", it's worth considering whether there is a better word, for example, "very angry" or "furious"? "Very big" or "gigantic"? "Very hungry" or "famished"?
• Indeed. As in, "it was very cold indeed." "It was very cold" is enough, or even better, "It was freezing." (see the previous point!) Most of the time, "indeed" can go, unless the point of view character is agreeing with, say, her mother, who just said something like: "You'd better take a coat. It's colder than it was yesterday." When your character goes outside they will notice: "It was indeed colder than it was yesterday".
• Rather. As in, "it was rather cold," or "He thought that idea was rather clever". A simple "It was cold" or "he thought it was a clever idea" would do. "Rather" is often rather (!!) a redundant word, and the prose flows just as well, if not better, without it.
• Though. As in, "there was nobody there, though." It's often better just to say, "there was nobody there," or "however, there was nobody there."
• Apparently/it seemed as if. "The crowd was apparently fascinated by the woman on the roof."/"It seemed as if the crowd was fascinated by the woman on the roof." They are fascinated if that's what the point of view character observes. Perhaps a bit more showing, not telling, is needed here, in any case. "The crowd craned their necks to get a better view of the woman on the roof."
• To himself. As in, "it was cold, she said to herself" or "he smiled to himself." Especially the latter. If someone is smiling, anyone would be able to see it, except the person doing the smiling! Unless they happen to be looking in the mirror at the time, can anyone, strictly speaking, smile to themselves? Characters may talk to themselves - as in real life, they may find it's the only way to get a decent conversation, but as in real life, if they do it too often people start looking at them suspiciously. This is why my character who can see and hear dead people holds her mobile phone to her ear when she answers them!
• Of course. Goes without saying. While I'm not saying never use qualifiers like "Of course" or "naturally", if they appear too often it sounds repetitive. I'd say delete most occurrences.
• Looked around. As I read through my draft, I was astounded at how many times my characters "looked around". It seemed that every time anyone entered a room, came out of a tube station, got off a plane, woke up, or arrived anywhere by any means, they "looked around." I might have kept it on one occasion, but the rest had to go as it was sounding repetitive. One instance became "they assessed the situation" and another "they took stock of their surroundings". Others vanished entirely. "He emerged from the tube station and looked around. The street was empty" became "He emerged from the tube station. The street was empty."

There's nothing wrong with looking around or any other thing your characters might often do (such as taking their coats off or sniffing the air or grimacing or whatever) as long as your characters don't do too much of it. Anything your characters seem to do an awful lot, more than necessary for establishing character traits, can be conveyed in slightly different words or even omitted altogether.

This is my personal list of frequently recurring words and phrases - I don't know how many of them, if any, are traps every writer falls into, or if it's just me. Even if it is just me, I'm willing to bet that every writer, if they read through their drafts with this in mind, will be able to spot a number of words or phrases that they use too much. Some might appear on my list, or there may be no overlap at all; but knowing what your own over-used and/or not-strictly-necessary words and phrases are can only be a good thing.

I find now that I've made the list, I catch myself using them sometimes but can quickly delete or re-word on the spot. I confess this even happened a couple of times while I was writing this blog post!

Once you know what yours are, if you use a word processor, it's easy to run a search for them in your files and deal with each one in turn. I'm certainly going to do that from now on.