Wednesday, October 26, 2011

WIP Wednesday: The Best Little Editing Book (Ever?)

I'm going through In the Memory House and purging unnecessary language. Not the f-bombs, oh no. Although I've been criticized before, if my characters need to vent, they need to vent.

I'm using suggestions from the late Ken Rand's book, The 10% Solution, to cull unnecessary words from the book.

The ctrl+F (find) feature is a writer's best friend. I've already made an adverb pass (searching for "ly").  I'm currently limiting "of"'s appearances. (I almost wrote "appearances of of"--see how it works?)

What editing tricks do you use to prepare your manuscripts?

5 comments:

Barry Napier said...

I do the search for "ly", too. I have also recently learned that I also need to do a similar search for "seems/seemed" and "as if".

Aaron Polson said...

"as if"? That's a good one. Seems/seemed is always a bugger, too.

Danielle Birch said...

There are certain words I overuse so I'm always using "Ctrl F" to fine and replace or just remove altogether. "Though" is one of the words I overuse.

Anthony Rapino said...

I have the tendency of overusing "that." I search for that one.

RL.Treadway said...

I use the find function for over-used words in addition to words in close proximity. I made a whole list to be on the safe side. lol. Especially the He, She, That, What, Who, Have, May, etc... passive writing is a pet peeve of mine so I target words that tend to create passive voice.