Sunday, April 27, 2008

Self Editing - Eliminating Overused Words

I'm self editing one of my children's books today by using the Find tool in Microsoft word. I enter a word to search and replace or better yet delete these evil repetitive words from my masterpiece.

The following is a list of overused words:

amazing
awesome
awfully
bad
beautiful
big
fine
good
great
happy
interesting
look
nice
quite
really
said
so
very
well

Here is another list of problem words:
http://hlwdwritinggroup.blogspot.com/2007/09/self-editing-tip.html

Also eliminate ly adverbs, in general (since you can usually show this with action instead of telling it with the adverb, giving a richer read)

finally
actually
really

Change
but/ or/ and to START sentences

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