Is there a word you use too much?

Hmmm.... My find and replace tells me that I have "some" written 632 times.
Of course, some of those are variations. Somebody someone something. But I'm zapping me some "some."

 

Smile.

I use it way, way too much.

But the thing is, we do smile - a lot! I smile at my kids in the morning, I smile at some things on the news, I smile when I hear a certain song at work, I smile when I share a silent joke with workmates, I smile at people on the street who say hello, I positively beam when I get home, sit on the sofa and the cat comes running in to spend half an hour on my knee, purring and headbutting me. I smile when the hubs comes home and asks how my day was, I smile when laddo shows me his finished homework, when girlie comes in from work, when I type these posts, when my favorite show comes on, when I write ...

And many of the other words for smile, convey something other than a warm, lovely smile.

But yes - I can see a lot of editing coming my way when my MS comes back from the editor!

 

Yeah, this happens to me a lot. I hate it when you write a passage then realize you overused a word. The passage sounds so good in your head until you see the word jump out at you. Its like eating a moldy cucumber. Just terrible.

For me, the word this happens with is almost always cucumber. Today, I thought I had written a great opening paragraph until I looked at it a little closer.

It all starts with a cucumber. In most cases a bad cucumber, but a cucumber nonetheless. And these cucumbers, they evolve over time into genetically modified cucumbers. This goes on for a while until you’ve got more cucumbers. Larger and not really cucumber-shaped. Cucumbers that weren't the original cucumber at all. Then there’s the pickles, crazy and terrible, immune to serious consideration. It’s these types of cucumbers, when eaten, that are truly great cucumbers.

After some cucumbering that could be edited into something better. Time to pull out the celery sticks and get to work.

 

I can't think of any I overuse in general (I'm sure they're there, though), but I'm bad about getting stuck on a word for the duration of a chapter or short or what have you, and when I read it back I realize this word is just everywhere in this one section. My thing used to always be highlighting them and going through looking for ways to rework around the problem word or replace it with a synonym in as many instances as possible, but more recently I tend to just delete it and see what happens. Shockingly, the world has yet to end.

 

For the longest time I would say that a character 'Shrugged' about once every four paragraphs. My characters were indecisive as heck.

 

I find myself constantly using the word "The". Its all over my work. I can's help it. It's like one big stutter!

Just kidding. I have no real input here, but man do you guys give me a lot to think about. Great thread guys.

 

I use 'sudden' and 'suddenly' too much, even if my novel is action packed. Thankfully it's draft 0.5, so I can trawl through and deal with it. I thought more people might have had this issue.

Although the Gospel of Mark uses 'immediately' 40 times, and it didn't harm his sales.

 

I've noticed that, when I manage to stop over-using a given word, I immediately replace it with something else. It's like a game of Whack-a-Mole.

 

Yup. I needed to get rid of "like" but a lot of them I was changing to "such as"

 

I'd say it would have to be "However" or "the" when I do third person. Some words just get ingrained in your mind though.

 

Blood. No way around it though when the scene demands it. Let there be blood.