Is there a word you use too much?

Great idea! I've been using the find/replace thing to track down words but it gets cumbersome to keep finding & then exiting out after each time to edit.

 

Are you using Microsoft Word 2013? If so, you can edit it while the search is still up.

 

Here's the good joke: Until I looked at it for this thread, I thought that by "wordless" the author meant "silent"! That would have been even worse, but as is, it's bad enough.

I wonder if I'm using expressions like "He gave her a look" and "She gave him a smile" too much. I'm trying to avoid overusing phrases like "He smiled at her," but this giving thing seems a little wooden.

 

Smile doesn't seem like one that would be too terrible to use frequently. You could always vary it with other words like grin, smirked, face brightened with joy, beamed, looked amused, lips lifted with glee (although, that last one could have more than one meaning.)

 

Haha, I was actually working on asking how one would silently roar or cry, when I also realized they were only wordless! I felt rather silly for not noticing they were only wordless, but now I know I'm not alone

Oy! I'm finding pain with this, too, only with them grinning. Smiling doesn't work, smirking only sometimes, and beamed and jeering certainly don't.

 

I suppose, perhaps, indeed, smiled, smirked, walked, rush, ran, gazed, looked, scanned.

 

• Just
• Basically
• Only
• Also (used more than once in the same sentence - argh!)
• Feel (as opposed to think, believe, etc - I always seem to default to 'feel')

I once used variations on the word 'creep' several times in one paragraph (in my defence: it was a supernatural novel) - crept, creeping, creepy, etc. I was very embarrassed when this was pointed out to me!

 

Grrrr ... I found a new one. He thought or She thought. I'm trying to rewrite a bunch of things with only the thoughts themselves and no tag to go with it.

 

I found 198 cases of the word - thought-
Been editing and now have it down to 164. Plenty more to go.

 

There's a WORD macro around somewhere on the interwebz that will present to you your word occurrences in descending order of frequency. Ignoring "the" and "and" and such, it might give you a good idea of what you're using too much.

 

I have two main characters who are brothers and do a lot of 'turning as one' - well not anymore, I have been through and changed most of them.

 

That seems like a good one to edit. I usually note the silliness when characters do things together out of coincidence. It's not always bad but it can be taken too far.

 

I think my characters tend to use the same redundant speech patterns that I do, and I try hard to make them not sound like me and also not sound forced. :/ I tend to say "well," "so," "I mean," and others I can't think of that are just unnecessary a lot in real life, so my characters sometimes say them by accident, too. Ugh.

 

Yeah... It's fine if ONE of my characters speaks like me but it sucks when I notice all of them doing it.

 

Found a new one to edit away ... the word Actually.

 

I tend to use the word slightly a lot, alongside the word gripped and always. I actually switch around a bunch though with the consistency of my verbage. The amount of repetition I use often depends on the piece I'm writing.

 

Another forumite read my WIP, and gently told me about my pet word. It was so gently done that I barely noticed they did it, that's how gentle it was. Gently, gentle...gentled? Gention! Gentle has lost all meaning, a new word must be found.

Honestly, I have no idea what you're talking about. *Stares at Tenderizer*

 

Positives: I was able to get the number "just" down from over 300 to 62. Most of those are in dialogue.

Negative: I changed a lot of those "just" into "only" now I noticed I have over 300 "only"
sigh.

 

You poor thing.

 

Eek—only 300? Keep at it @doggiedude; being aware of them is key, it's not easy as the blighters are naturally camouflaged from their creator. There's a sense of wellbeing mind that ices the catharsis come the end.

But.... you say the repetitions are in dialogue? If so, you could get away with few more than usual if they're pinned to one character alone. For that's a trait. I have a character that says 'see' a lot, and its quite deliberate. I fess though to the overuse of the words 'mind', 'now', 'though' and 'sense'. < Which I notice have even crept into this as yet unedited post.

 

Space

 

backspace, but that doesn't show up in the finished product

 

But seriously, this thread made me take a look. Nothing horribly obvious, but I found several paragraphs with three or more "then"s in them. Good sequencing word, but I need to find some others it seems.

 

I don't mind if I overuse a particular word like smile for instance. My pet problem is to be verbs, eg was. Then I have to rewrite the entire sentence, not just use the find and replace, it's like rewriting the whole damn thing

 

In terms of "words used too much", there are words that you shouldn't use too much, like just, only, and so forth. Phrases, too. But there are also words that are supposed to be ok to use a lot, because they're invisible and they prevent you from using other, more irritating words. "Said" is the big example. It's an ongoing, raging argument, of course, but a lot of people believe that you can use nothing but "said" for dialog tags and get away with it.

Actually, the fact that there's a raging argument about it shows that it's as much a question of opinion and preference as it is about Best Practices.

I personally believe (and I'm not alone in this) that "was" is in the same vein. You should mix up your descriptive prose, of course, but I don't think "was" is automatically bad juju. Certainly it isn't an automatic indication of passive sentence construction. And often the replacement phrasing comes out looking contorted and contrived.

So, by all means, edit your work and improve your prose. But don't stress it too much.