First - thanks, I'll admit I was really looking forward to your response to this post. ;)
I really like your theory about the "weasel words," that makes a lot of sense. It's just shocking to me how MANY of them there are, and how they slip in to so many places that they don't belong, and beyond that, how even when I'm on the lookout for them, some slip by unobserved, like the eye just stumbles right by them. They weaken every single sentence that contains them. And so many are adverbs! I've grown suspicious every time I see an adverb now, and has me trying to sort out what are the 5% of the times when I can use adverbs without them really just sucking up the energy and verve of a sentence.
"Though" and "but..." -- I've been cutting usages of the words "however, "yet" and "still," also. I've found a couple sentences that contained but more than once, and some that contained a but, and a though, and a still - some real crimes. Again, it's been very hard for me to figure out the times that I have to use them. Every once and a while, I leave a "though" and - god forbid - I've even added it once or twice, but I've grown remarkably skeptical of it. Yet despite that, I noticed when I was writing the above post just how often I was using it (and how often I insert the word "just" where it doesn't belong - I left it in the preceding by way of demonstration!) ...I think that's more than just being the "ums" - though that's definitely part of it. I think that it's also a reflection of how we think. So for my brain, I guess I don't think in definites, I think in conditionals "it might even be the case that" kind of sentences...so those are what I write, unless I concentrate on not doing so. :)
Compound sentences must be a tough one to over come, because there are so many times when that's simply the only way to adequately convey an idea - so sorting out which ones are really necessary, and which ones are part of the new-found bad habit must be tough!
Definitely batshit inducing. :(
The willpower thing - it's definitely a thought. I'll consider. :) I'm going to have to see how it reads when I go back and review what I've got here. I realized earlier today that I was going to have to do at least one quick read through on each chapter after I finished revising it, cause I did this with the intro and discovered that I made some dumb mistakes (like one place where I deleted the noun instead of the adverb I was trying to get rid of... :) ).
Did you have any problems with How It Went In The Game when you did Midnight Never Come, or was it different enough to not spawn that issue? How did you overcome those problems if you had them?
Also speaking from different experience - I completely agree about the 1/10 the wordage. With the grants, I'll write a section and think I can't possibly make it any shorter, but the time comes, and two or three pages will "Poof!" become one. What I haven't yet figured out is how to make this magic happen with my fiction - but it's nice to hear that I'll probably get there. ;)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-08-29 07:10 pm (UTC)I really like your theory about the "weasel words," that makes a lot of sense. It's just shocking to me how MANY of them there are, and how they slip in to so many places that they don't belong, and beyond that, how even when I'm on the lookout for them, some slip by unobserved, like the eye just stumbles right by them. They weaken every single sentence that contains them. And so many are adverbs! I've grown suspicious every time I see an adverb now, and has me trying to sort out what are the 5% of the times when I can use adverbs without them really just sucking up the energy and verve of a sentence.
"Though" and "but..." -- I've been cutting usages of the words "however, "yet" and "still," also. I've found a couple sentences that contained but more than once, and some that contained a but, and a though, and a still - some real crimes. Again, it's been very hard for me to figure out the times that I have to use them. Every once and a while, I leave a "though" and - god forbid - I've even added it once or twice, but I've grown remarkably skeptical of it. Yet despite that, I noticed when I was writing the above post just how often I was using it (and how often I insert the word "just" where it doesn't belong - I left it in the preceding by way of demonstration!) ...I think that's more than just being the "ums" - though that's definitely part of it. I think that it's also a reflection of how we think. So for my brain, I guess I don't think in definites, I think in conditionals "it might even be the case that" kind of sentences...so those are what I write, unless I concentrate on not doing so. :)
Compound sentences must be a tough one to over come, because there are so many times when that's simply the only way to adequately convey an idea - so sorting out which ones are really necessary, and which ones are part of the new-found bad habit must be tough!
Definitely batshit inducing. :(
The willpower thing - it's definitely a thought. I'll consider. :) I'm going to have to see how it reads when I go back and review what I've got here. I realized earlier today that I was going to have to do at least one quick read through on each chapter after I finished revising it, cause I did this with the intro and discovered that I made some dumb mistakes (like one place where I deleted the noun instead of the adverb I was trying to get rid of... :) ).
Did you have any problems with How It Went In The Game when you did Midnight Never Come, or was it different enough to not spawn that issue? How did you overcome those problems if you had them?
Also speaking from different experience - I completely agree about the 1/10 the wordage. With the grants, I'll write a section and think I can't possibly make it any shorter, but the time comes, and two or three pages will "Poof!" become one. What I haven't yet figured out is how to make this magic happen with my fiction - but it's nice to hear that I'll probably get there. ;)