Are you a writer? Well, if you are, you need to master the craft of fiction. No matter what genre or niche you’re writing. It will make you a better writer, more easily published, & marketable. To help you get there, I’ve decided to expand my “Writing Lite Series” by offering 50 Tips for Fiction Writers. Today is Tip #1.
Each tip will be posted both on Pinterest and here. I hope you find them useful. And fun. Not to worry—they’re short.
Writing Lite Tip 1: Delete extraneous words like “sometimes, almost, very, that…”
In our efforts to be precise, we often end up doing the opposite by adding words like “sometimes, “almost,” or “very.” Nine out of ten times you don’t need them. They qualify the verb or noun they precede but, at the same time, they weaken those verbs and nouns.
Strong deliberate prose is what you’re aiming for. Not milquetoast, namby-pamby prose. The word “that” is often misused as well. Did you really mean “who” or “whom”? Or can you eliminate it altogether? Usually you can. The one exception I try to make is when “that” makes the rhythm of the sentence smoother.