Today’s writing tip courtesy of the letter U is unnecessary words.  We should always strive to make our writing as tight as possible.  It creates dynamic sentences that help the reader become immersed in the story rather than focused on the words telling the story.  I regularly participate in a flash fiction contest where the stories have to be less than 1000 words, and I always aim to make my first draft at least 300 words over the limit.  During the revision process, I then have to find a way to cut those extra words and end up crafting stronger sentences because of it.

There are lots of ways to create more concise, zippier sentences, but an easy cut is filler words like: very, really, just, and that.  They are almost always unnecessary and lazily lounge on the page adding nothing to the meaning of the sentence.  I don’t usually have an issue with very or really, but I do tend to overuse that, and my personal kryptonite is just.  

An editor at a conference first pointed out my just issue to me, so I did a Ctrl+F on my novel and was horrified to find at least one just on every page.  Some pages had more than ten!  I just don’t know why because it just seems odd, but I just love just.  And knowing about my problem doesn’t make me use it less.  I’ll write a quick email and be absolutely certain it is just free only to discover five justs sitting there like weeds in my sentences.  So I now use Ctrl+F as my trusty weed detector with everything I write and go through yanking those suckers out by the roots.  

I just want to let you know that I’m going to the library.

I want to let you know I’m going to the library.

Now neither sentence is spectacular, but you can see how removing the empty words just and that doesn’t change the meaning of the sentence at all and makes it less wordy and easier to read.

In some instances the use of these unnecessary words is justified, so when you come across a sentence with one of them, read it both with and without the word.  If the meaning doesn’t change, yank it outta there!

Do any of the unnecessary words plague you?  Do you try to keep them out while writing first drafts or remove them later?  How Upside-down is Freya with her U? 

Today’s writing tip courtesy of the letter U is unnecessary words.  We should always strive to make our writing as tight as possible.  It creates dynamic sentences that help the reader become immersed in the story rather than focused on the words telling the story.  I regularly participate in a flash fiction contest where the stories have to be less than 1000 words, and I always aim to make my first draft at least 300 words over the limit.  During the revision process, I then have to find a way to cut those extra words and end up crafting stronger sentences because of it.

There are lots of ways to create more concise, zippier sentences, but an easy cut is filler words like: very, really, just, and that.  They are almost always unnecessary and lazily lounge on the page adding nothing to the meaning of the sentence.  I don’t usually have an issue with very or really, but I do tend to overuse that, and my personal kryptonite is just.  

An editor at a conference first pointed out my just issue to me, so I did a Ctrl+F on my novel and was horrified to find at least one just on every page.  Some pages had more than ten!  I just don’t know why because it just seems odd, but I just love just.  And knowing about my problem doesn’t make me use it less.  I’ll write a quick email and be absolutely certain it is just free only to discover five justs sitting there like weeds in my sentences.  So I now use Ctrl+F as my trusty weed detector with everything I write and go through yanking those suckers out by the roots.  

I just want to let you know that I’m going to the library.

I want to let you know I’m going to the library.

Now neither sentence is spectacular, but you can see how removing the empty words just and that doesn’t change the meaning of the sentence at all and makes it less wordy and easier to read.

In some instances the use of these unnecessary words is justified, so when you come across a sentence with one of them, read it both with and without the word.  If the meaning doesn’t change, yank it outta there!

Do any of the unnecessary words plague you?  Do you try to keep them out while writing first drafts or remove them later?  How Upside-down is Freya with her U?