Hello, and welcome to another Writing Tip Monday on a Tuesday with Cat! My name is Cat, and I was busy yesterday. For those that are new here, I’ve been writing unprofessionally for 16 years. I’ve learned a thing or two in my time, but feel free to take any of my advice with as many grains of salt as you see fit. Let’s get into it.
If you’re someone who constantly has high word counts and are looking to cut them down to fit into a zine or just in general, then this post is for you! I’m talking to all my over-writers out there. Today I want to talk about how to trim down unnecessary words and phrases from your writing to be more concise and less confusing and redundant. Keep in mind that there are times when you can use these things, but I’m just saying that a majority of the time you shouldn’t. And before anyone gets their feelings hurt, I’m guilty of a lot of these during drafting too because sometimes it’s just easier to use them and get the words onto the page. These are all things to eliminate in editing. If it’s easier for you to use them during your actual drafting process, then by all means. Just be sure to go back and edit them out, and eventually, you’ll reach a point where you can avoid them during drafting all together.
1. Filler Words
“Cat what do you mean by filler words?”
Words like “that,” “very,” “really,” etc. 9/10 you don’t need them, but let’s talk about each one specifically.
That is one that I’m particularly guilty of. Maybe it’s a regional dialect thing, but I use “that” in my regular conversations when I’m speaking a lot. The thing about “that” is it’s usually unnecessary, and sentences can make sense without it. Key word: usually. I’ll give a couple examples to show you the difference between when “that” is appropriate, and when it’s not needed:
Appropriate use of that:
“Hey, can you hand me that?” She pointed to the wrench on the counter.
Here, context will matter, but it’s perfectly fine to replace an object in a scene with the word “that” in this context. Sometimes “that” does have a place, so I’m not saying go out and delete all the “thats” from your stories. Just assess whether or not it’s necessary in each context, like my next example:
Unnecessary use of that:
Something told her that he couldn’t be trusted.
In this context, the sentence can work without the word “that.” It still makes grammatical sense to say, “Something told her he couldn’t be trusted.” The word “that” is just an extra word filling up space in the sentence. Delete it.
“Very” and “really” tend to serve the same function, so I’ll lump them together. These two words offer a scale your readers don’t need. In most cases, it’s best to replace these words with stronger verbs, more specific adjectives, or just delete them all together. I’ll give some examples:
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