I’m dissecting the article Hunting Down the Pleonasm, by Allen Guthrie, using it as a cattle prod to search for little nasties in my manuscript. Yep, you can join in the fun, too. Let’s take a looksee at topic #29
I Love Love Love smile and shrug. I’ve learned to curb my sighing, but I used to be guilty of that too.
I think smiling and grinning are overused in a lot of writing. I really don’t worry about it in a first draft. I let them smile and shrug away. But these words are on my list of little buggers to pare down when I’m all done.
I just go in to my manuscript, do a search for “shrug” and my manuscript lights up like a Christmas tree. So like a good little editor, I give my manuscript a present and curb them down to once every 50 pages or so.
Smiling Sadly has to do with that “ly” rule. Almost every “ly” word can be removed from a manuscript. I try not to type them at all, even in a first draft.
What words do you overuse? Do you smile sadly while you shrug off your grin?
Related articles
- Smirk, Grin, or Smile (repost) (cultofracewood.com)