{"id":5024,"date":"2015-11-11T07:04:03","date_gmt":"2015-11-11T12:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5024"},"modified":"2015-11-11T07:04:03","modified_gmt":"2015-11-11T12:04:03","slug":"its-red-pen-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5024","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s Red Pen Time!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_5025\" style=\"width: 329px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5025\" class=\" wp-image-5025\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/2349632625_4eba371b56_z.jpg?resize=319%2C216\" alt=\"editing, red pen\" width=\"319\" height=\"216\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-5025\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">(photo: Nic McPhee, creative commons license)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>BookBub marketing expert Diana Urban has <a href=\"http:\/\/dianaurban.com\/words-you-should-cut-from-your-writing-immediately\">advice for writers<\/a>\u2014and that\u2019s pretty much all of us, right?!\u2014about words to excise in our prose. You have probably heard many times about the importance of some of these, but yet, when I read the drafts of new writers, not to mention people who should know better (like me!), they are persistent problems.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Avoid passive verbs\u2014the classic example \u201cMistakes were made\u201d illustrates the problem perfectly. Who made those mistakes? Passive constructions remove the \u201cactor\u201d from the \u201cact.\u201d \u201cThe keys were misplaced.\u201d Yes, but who should be looking for them?! With the passive, you never know; responsibility diffuses in a miasma of vagueness.<\/li>\n<li>In fact, avoid auxiliary verbs in general. \u201cI was standing at the window, and I was gazing at the sheep\u201d may have been an acceptable dozy writing style 150 years ago, but today\u2019s readers want to get to the point: \u201cI stood at the window and gazed at the sheep, including that black one.\u201d (Hero of the rest of the story, no doubt.)<\/li>\n<li>I once had to cut 40,000 words out of a 135,000-word manuscript and found having people simply go to the window and look at the sheep took a lot fewer words than saying they stood up first. Unless a character has problems standing, it isn\u2019t necessary to have them stand, then go. Nor do they need to stand <em>up<\/em>, as Urban points out, or conversely, sit <em>down<\/em>. Sit.<\/li>\n<li>Similarly, it isn\u2019t usually necessary to say \u201cI <em>started<\/em> to call the police,\u201d \u201cI <em>began<\/em> wondering whether . . .\u201d As Nike would say, just do it! \u201cI called the police\u201d; \u201cI wondered whether . . .\u201d Only rarely do you need the pause created by \u201cI started to call the police, but he pulled out a gun and pointed it at me, and I laid the phone gently on the desk.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Intensifiers, like \u201cvery,\u201d \u201creally,\u201d (<em>really<\/em> bad, that), when perhaps your prose would perk up with a jauntier verb. Either something\u2019s bad or it isn\u2019t. How much badder is <em>very<\/em> bad? Similarly, \u201ctotally, completely, absolutely, literally.\u201d Careless writers include phrases like \u201ccompletely destroyed.\u201d Redundant. Totally.<\/li>\n<li>Removing \u201cjust\u201d or, in my case, \u201ceven\u201d is a bit harder, but they are superfluous most of the time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Urban\u2019s list continues, including 43 words to jettison. And, she demonstrates a handy way to find these stumblers in your own writing. It\u2019s hard to do, because some of them are so prevalent they slip under the radar. I do searches for them in my prose and find them in embarrassing profusion, so I\u2019ve taught myself to recognize them.<\/p>\n<p>Naturally, what is questionable in the narrative part of your work may be acceptable\u2014and desirable\u2014as part of dialog. People rarely speak as precisely as they write, and a character\u2019s persona may appropriately employ certain verbal tics. What\u2019s important is that the writer recognize them for what they are. Absolutely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BookBub marketing expert Diana Urban has advice for writers\u2014and that\u2019s pretty much all of us, right?!\u2014about words to excise in our prose. You have probably heard many times about the importance of some of these, but yet, when I read &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5024\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"It's Red Pen Time!--words and constructions to cut from your prose","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[174,185,51],"tags":[414],"class_list":["post-5024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-draft-blog","category-language","category-words","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1j2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5026,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5024\/revisions\/5026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}