I Got Busy and Forgot
I forgot about yesterday’s blog. I had a lot going on, like editing my book. I’m still figuring out how to juggle everything, now that I’ve made more work for myself.
I’ve been looking for a specific thing, but looking for that specific issue has caused me to find other issues. So I’m going through again, to make those changes. I got so wrapped up in the changes I neglected other things I wanted to do.
I started looking for a certain type of word: one that ends in “ing.” Focusing on the repetitiveness of these kinds of words, got me to focus on the repetitiveness of other words. Words like “just” and “that” can often be dropped without consequence to the meaning of the sentence. In narrative, I worked to drop them. Since many people use these words in every day speech, you’ll still find them in some dialogue. While adverbs can’t be dropped without a loss of meaning, it’s still easy to change them. I’m working on it.
The next thing on the list is the list of repetitive words I didn’t realize were repetitive until I started reading like a reader. My list:
When
Then
Even
Gestured
Would
Could
Should
Though
Those are “just” the ones I’ve spotted. I try to remove these from narrative if I can. Again, since some people talk using those words, dialogue may still contain them.
If you write do you have words you repeat? What about in your speech? Do you find yourself saying the same words/phrases? Let’s talk more on Facebook!