We’re readers and writers. We love words. We love their musicality and rhythm, their evocation of achingly beautiful images and thoughts, and their ability to convey us to fantastic worlds and tell exhilarating stories. But what if our love of words transmogrifies into an unhealthy obsession with one word in particular, stalking it like a psychotic spurned by a paramour to the point that it wants to take out a restraining order against us?
I speak from my own sordid experience. I recently received the copyedits back on my latest novel. Overall, the changes were minimal, except for one specific piece of feedback: the copyeditor remarked on my absolute adoration of the word “just.” I thought perhaps she was exaggerating until I did a search for it. In my 93,000-word novel, I had used “just” 232 times.
Some words must be used over and over. There is no substitute for “the,” and any replacement for “said” has to be used judiciously and infrequently unless you’re writing a Hardy Boys mystery. But while “just” has many proper applications, I had employed it primarily to amp up the suspense. Someone had “just a minute” until the bomb went off. Or a person ducked behind a statue “just as bullets slammed into the wall around her.” As I re-read the copyedits, it became comical to see how often “just” appeared, sometimes three or four to a page.
I’m grateful that my copyeditor called them out. A reader who encountered all of them might come to wonder if I had any other way to build the tension in a scene. “Just” still had its place in the novel, but I got rid of half the occurrences.
Repeated use of a word can be distracting and take the reader out of the story, especially if the repetition occurs in close proximity. In a single paragraph of the novel during a fight scene, I used “bashed” twice. I replaced one of them with “kicked.” The online thesaurus gets a lot of use during the editing phase.
Unusual words only have to appear two or three times in a novel to seem overused. In another novel I realized I had used the word “pristine” seven times. My theory is that as I was writing the manuscript over the course of months, I would get to a place where I needed a word to mean “spotless” and thought to myself, “You know what word I haven’t used yet? Pristine.” In another month of writing, I’d forget that I’d used “pristine” and have the same thought all over again. After copyediting, I ended up keeping only one “pristine.”
I don’t think I have a way to turn off my need for repetition. It seems to occur no matter how consciously I try to avoid it. That’s why having an independent editorial eye is so important. I suppose I use similar unusual words and turns of phrases from novel to novel, but no editor that I’ve worked with goes through every book in a writer’s oeuvre to make sure that doesn’t happen. I’m happy enough to minimize them in a single novel.
I’d love to hear from other writers what words you’ve fallen in love with in your own manuscripts. Just try me.
My most recent word of choice is “soliloquy”. I wrote a poem a few days back titled- A solitary soliloquy”. Then I wrote a poem- Alone- and soliloquy (and solitary) both showed up in the first paragraph. But it kind of went with the flow so I didn’t crop them out.
“I thought perhaps she was exaggerating until I did a search for it. In my 93,000-word novel, I had used “just” 232 times.”
I just searched my manuscript for the word just. 80 times in 31k words. Looks like I just beat you
“Just” is my demon word, as well, Boyd. I also love commas way more than I should.
John Gilstrap
http://www.johngilstrap.com
I do this all the time. I ever get what I call “word of the day” syndrome from time to time, where I can’t seem to stay away from a particular word. “Just” is one of them; “enough” is another.
The next to last draft of the WIP will begin with using Word’s Replace function to remove all the justs, verys, enoughs, and a handful of other words (I have a list) from the manuscript altogether. I can much more easily replce those that are needed than cut those already there.
Oh dear…I known this syndrome well. My word tic is “then.” As in, “He turned off the engine then went…” I also rely way too much on eyes doing things — flitting, flickering, wandering. And eyes can’t wander anywhere really unless they’ve fallen out of your head.
Sigh…
I basically have the same problem, but with a different word. It’s basically easy to remove it if I think about it. But when you’re writing a first draft, you basically enter a zone where words just flow out of you, and then it basically becomes much harder to police one’s own word usage. Basically.
I had pointed out a word that one guy in my critique group used excessively, “seemed”. I also had a friend who always had her characters drinking coffee. It was as if every time she took a break from writing and retrieved a cup of coffee, she’d sit down and begin writing, and the characters had coffee. Weird.
Just like you, Boyd, I just love using the word “just.” “Even” is another overused word, as are “only,” “it,” “try(ied)” “something,” and many others. The common thread for me is words that are vague in some way or another. Example: “It” instead of what “it” is.
I’ve created an editing checklist for myself that makes me search for these lazy words and change or delete them as much as possible to make a stronger sentence.
I’m seeing an editing checklist in my future, as well. And I’m relieved to learn I’m not the only person who suffers from word-of-the-day disease.
Thanks for the great blog, authors and commenters.
Oh, here’s but a few gems:
Whoa
Say
So
Like
Dude
Big
Man
Cool
Awesome
And that all-time favorite:
No problem
Out of 151,864 words
Just 708
Whoa 14
Say 220
So 2062
Like 636
Dude 65
Big 398
Man 126
Cool 44
Awesome 1
No problem 16
Then 485 This is another bad one!
But 536 Everybody’s got at least one of these.
Suddenly, a word popped unbidden from behind the barricade unexpectedly replicating itself to everyone’s surprise. Unable to reload fast enough they fled from the suddenly unexpected surprise.
Mine is “nice”. Nine times in four chapters. Not only was it repeated, but is such a weak word. Now zero times.
My top two are “just” and “that”. During journalism school, we were taught to exorcise “that” but I’ve had to train my self to un-“just”.
I am “Just” as guilty of overusing the word, Just. But I am aware of it, and so I delete them during my line edits. Often I can’t tell what word I am repeating until my rounds of revisions. That’s why I need to do several read-throughs. There’s always something new to catch each time. Often it’s a phrase rather than a particular word.
I was able to “de-then” myself after doing some proofreading for a small press and having to exorcise “then” from one writer’s book about a jillion times. When I went on the editor’s chopping block, my tic was “looked” and “felt.” My characters constantly looked left, right, up, down, and all around and then felt the results of all that looking. GAH!
I used to be guilty of having my characters flush or blush at every bit of emotion. It got to the point that a beta asked me if my MC had a hormone problem.
Nod
My characters nod to show agreement, nod slighty to show thought unless they are nodding in thought or nod to give themselves a minute to think. A Beta reader asked me if I had characters or bubbleheads…..
This is a great point. Scrivener has a word count feature that might be useful for troubleshooting this sort of thing from a birds eye perspective. I’m going to take a closer look at my current draft and see what words I might be abusing.
Great post!