Let’s Write – The Basics of Self-Editing: Common Mistakes

Phew, we made it! Welcome to the final instalment in our series on How To Self-Edit. We’ve already discussed:

Today, we’ll focus on the common mistakes found in our writing. You know, those little gremlins that slip into even the tightest manuscript, and leave writers pulling out their hair.

The good news is these issues are easily fixed, and we can train ourselves to avoid them altogether. Daunting, I know, especially for newer writers. But it’s not that difficult to learn what to look out for, and I find myself automatically fixing issues that I wouldn’t have spotted a year ago.

Ready? Let’s do this.

Repetition

Yes, I know, I’ve mentioned repetition in this series (a lot), but allow me this opportunity to repeat myself because it’s so important.

Intentional repetitions are powerful tools in our arsenal. For example. The tap drip, drip, drips. Delivering the same word three times illustrates how the droplets plip, plip, plip. But even intentional repetitions can kill a novel in a hurry if they happen in every, every, every sentence.

Most of us struggle with repetitions we don’t even realise we keep writing.

If you want your writing to be tighter and better than ever, find and remove the unintentional repetitions in your manuscript. This one, unobtrusive thing has levelled up my writing in a way I could never imagine.

Our speech patterns are made for overused words, phrases, or ideas. Using phrases familiar to our conversational partners means we don’t have to work as hard to be understood.

Amplifiers do the same thing. When I’m hungry, my family knows I need food, but can survive a little longer. When I’m very hungry, they know I need food now. And when I’m FREAKING HUNGRY, they’re already manning the battle stations. By using the cliché manning the battle stations, you also get exactly what I’m trying to say.

But if our writing mimicked our speech, all books would be as thick as telephone directories. Add every uhm and ah, and nothing will ever get said.

Additionally, readers tend to gloss over those phrases they know well. The more we repeat phrases in our books, the fewer readers will actively take them in. The idea is to keep the reader interested in the story, and we’ll do that more easily if we don’t lull them to sleep with constant repetitions.

Avoid these:

Intensifiers

What is an intensifier (also called a modifier)?

A word used to modify or amplify an adjective.

In the sentence I’m hungry, the word hungry describes my current state. As in, my stomach is empty. If I add a really, very, or extremely to that sentence, I’ve modified the word hungry. Now, it’s been taken up a notch from where it was before—it’s amplified.

I’m really hungry is one thing, but I’m extremely hungry carries even more emphasis.

But other adjectives would have emphasised how hungry I am without using the amplifiers. Famished, ravenous, or starving, for example.

Besides that, how hungry is really hungry anyway? Really isn’t a quantifiable measure. We must be specific in our writing—as specific as we can be, anyway (but more on this later). Our readers will have a clearer picture of what we mean if we use exact words.

For example, instead of shouting very loudly, we could find a more descriptive verb. Maybe bellowed, boomed, or roared. We know what a roar sounds like, which makes it easier to see the same picture as the writer.

Nine out of ten times, a sentence will be stronger if we remove the intensifiers and use stronger verbs or adjectives. Not always, though.

Real people use intensifiers in speech. Therefore, for our characters to sound like real people, they’ll use intensifiers and cusses. Some characters will use these words more than others, depending on the elements of their characterisation.

Sometimes, an author chooses to include an intensifier in the prose for the purpose these words exist—to amplify a specific idea. The key is to use this tool intentionally, otherwise it loses its impact.

Clichés

What are clichés?

Ideas or phrases that were meaningful when they were created, but have been repeated so often that they’ve lost their impact.

Well, some clichés might still result in impact. Tell someone they’re ugly as sin, for example. Go ahead. I’ll wait here while they slap you. 🤣

Most clichés were born in truth. We keep using them, because hey, the sun will shine tomorrow. Unless, of course, the star-eating aliens strike tonight, and we have to come up with a brand new cliché to lament the fact.

So how do we communicate ideas in a way readers will easily understand, without removing the impact from what we’re trying to say?

Easier said than done. 😉

Most of the time, rephrasing with stronger verbs makes a world of difference.

When I get stuck on clichés (mine typically involve hearts skipping beats and so on) I try to think of other physical or emotional cues. The Writing Emotions series exists because of my struggle with beat-skipping hearts.

I don’t think it’s necessary to remove every cliché from the manuscript, but this is a personal opinion, and writing instructors might give you different advice. I’m currently working on a manuscript in which one of my characters loves clichés and uses them constantly. The characterisation just works for him, but I’d never write a book featuring multiple cliché-heavy characters.

The fact remains that people use clichés in speech. At some point in a legal drama, someone is going to refuse to beat around the bush or note that time is money. In an action-adventure, someone will have the time of their life, or see their life flash before their eyes. In that sweet chick-lit, the dashing heroine will realise opposites attract, or if you love someone, you must set them free.

No matter the scenario, characters talk, and if they’re realistic, they’ll use the odd cliché to illustrate their point. I’ve even made up a list of clichés for my novels, so Ehrdia gains some depth.

If you’re unsure what qualifies as a cliché, check out this comprehensive list.

Weasel Words

What are weasel words?

Unspecific. Words or phrases that modify a sentence so that the meaning becomes ambiguous.

Advertisers love this kind of language because they can imply anything in advertisements, without offering hardcore proof to supplement their claims. For example:

Some people say that using face masks will keep your skin young.

Who said it? Where’s the proof? Even if somebody out there did say those words, they’re not involved in my statement, because I haven’t named them. If I want to sound even more authoritative, I’d write instead that ‘researchers say’. My sentence is altered to sound more important, but the proof remains mysterious.

My little people-pleasing heart finds it easier to blog when I’m not pointing a finger directly at anyone, and being the slightest bit ambiguous helps achieve that. Even when I’m referencing an element that annoyed me in a specific book, I refuse to name and shame other authors on my blog. For that reason, my posts are just riddled with weasels.

But what do weasel words have to do with storytellers?

Words like a bit, some, virtually, many, several, might, may, fairly, probably, and quite, to name some (see what I did there?) all qualify as weasel words. None of these words is definite or quantifiable.

When we spoke about intensifiers above, I mentioned that really hungry is ambiguous, because how hungry is really hungry? Weasel words are the same. The proverbial how long is a piece of string, to bring a cliché into the mix. 🤣

If a sentence can stand on its own without an added modifier, cut it. Stronger sentences make for emersed readers.

But here’s where it gets complicated.

When writing an unreliable narrator—a viewpoint character who doesn’t know everything or believes a lie—the manuscript will contain weasel words. If a character is a mind-reader, they know exactly what another character is thinking, what motivates them, and what brought them to where they are. Then we can write in specifics (this also applies to an omniscient viewpoint).

But, unless a character can read minds, they’re guessing at what drives the rest of the cast and therefore will be ambiguous when considering other characters. This is especially true if we write in deep or the first person points of view, and want the reader submerged in the thoughts of the narrating characters.

Pet Phrases

All writers have pet phrases. It’s a quirky thing we do. But we don’t have to give up our quirks entirely, because the things we do that make us stand out form a part of our unique authorial voice.

Still, if our pet phrases pop up too often, they become jarring to read. Anything that pulls the reader out of the story is bad.

In the early drafts of A Study of Ash & Smoke, all the male characters were constantly fiddling with their facial hair. And when I say constantly, I mean in every scene. Even worse—whenever Cara and Nathan were together, they glanced or peered at each other, so often that they did nothing else.

For these characters to feel more authentic to the reader, they have to act like real humans. If they’re always doing the same things, they become cartoony.

We can find repetitions by searching the document. In Word, press Ctrl + F, and type in the overused word/phrase in the search bar. We’ll then see each occurrence of the word/phrase, and we can decide which ones to remove or replace.

Many of my male characters lost their facial hair (sorry guys) and I had them use the objects at hand in the scene. If they were around a dinner table, they’d gesture with their cutlery, sip their drinks, or pop food into their mouths, instead of twisting the tips of their moustaches. I kept their facial hair fiddling to a minimum and used the remaining times this action happened as a personal quirk for one of the characters.

And instead of gazing at each other, I searched deeper into Cara and Nathan’s minds whenever they were together. What they were feeling, physically and emotionally, offered me other cues to influence their actions.

Which segues nicely into our next point.

Simple Verbs

Using the simplest verbs isn’t inherently wrong, but our characters do things lazily.

They take, stand, walk, look, bring, and give things. None of those verbs offers the reader a clear image of what the character is doing.

Of the hundred ways a person could stand, couldn’t I have chosen a verb that would better illustrate what I want the reader to see? Slouching is different from posing, and a martial arts stance is different from leaning, yet all of these examples involve standing.

Descriptive verbs will tighten our writing.

Dictionary Writing

I don’t know about you, but I read books to escape reality. A dictionary is a book, sure, but that’s not what I have in mind when I pick something from the fantasy or sci-fi shelf. If a writer uses too many words I don’t understand, the story has lost me forever.

Remember that episode of Friends, where Joey writes the letter to the adoption agency? He’s so afraid of failing Chandler and Monica that he replaces every word in the letter with a synonym from a dictionary, and hilarity ensues.

Don’t be like Joey, folks. Consider the target audience, and use language they will understand.

But you’re writing a crime novel, with a forensic specialist as the protagonist. And you spent five years researching the jargon, and your head is just overflowing with it.

Or you’ve built this world, and made up this language, with these cool new terms for animals and food, and holy wow, it’s so amazing.

Of course, we can include some world-specific lingo. Just keep in mind that normal people don’t have the same forensic or made-up vocabulary, and won’t have a clue what it means.

We must ask ourselves if the jargon or made-up lingo is important enough to risk the clarity of the story before adding it to the narrative.

Sentences that Start Weak

Don’t fall into the trap of starting every sentence with a pronoun. The struggle is real, I know.

There are five men walking into the room is an easy sentence. The reader knows what I mean, and it’s okay if I include a few easy sentences, right?

Five men stroll into the room is also an easy sentence. The reader still knows what I mean, but this sentence is stronger. It’s specific, the construction is streamlined, the reader has a clear visual of the verb, and I’ve saved 3 words. Additionally, this sentence shows the reader five men walking into the room, where the first sentence told the reader they were walking in.

Wherever possible, start sentences with the most important verbs or nouns. Sometimes, it’s impossible to avoid starting sentences with there are, or it was etc constructions, and that’s okay, just not in every paragraph.

As for starting sentences with personal pronouns (I, he, she, they, them, etc) again don’t start every sentence this way. Try to change it up with something else, and I don’t mean just flinging in the character’s first name.

And that wraps up the self-editing series! If you have requests for posts, don’t hesitate to contact me. I love hearing from you.

Until next time.

Yolandie