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Overused words

karriezai

Scribe
Does anyone have any words they suspect or know they use a lot in their writing?

I just put my text through Wordle (which doesn't even pick up the common articles and the like!) and saw that I use the crap out of 'back' for some reason. So that's one example.

Anything you can think of in your work?
 
He/She Especialy in the first half of chapter 1.

However, is one of my overused and done to death words as well.
I also use it a lot IDK why I just do.
~BL~
 
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Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
I use words like "but" and "then" and "suddenly," as well as a few words that I think sound old and flavorful, just to keep myself typing. But usually I trim the overuse later on.
 

Ravana

Istar
My main nemesis seems to be the word "even," with "ever" running not too far behind. I'm also somewhat old-fashioned in not generally deleting "that" when it appears as a relative pronoun; it's always the first place I start whenever I need to shorten something.
 

Lepton

Dreamer
Quite, occasionally, moment, and I tend to overuse comma's. My daily speech consists of these words, though, so they seep into my writing way too often. Of course it looks worse to me because I'm aware that I'm overusing the words.
 

Xanados

Maester
Pronouns are alright to use a lot, but when you introduce the character's name, it certainly lessens that usage.
@Devor, I tend to avoid the use of "suddenly". I feel that it's tacky in some ways.
 
I overuse "very" and "suddenly".

I once read a quote from Mark Twain, that went something like:

Replace every "Very" in your manuscript with the word "damn". Your publisher will cut it and your work will be all the better for it.

He was damn right.
 

Telcontar

Staff
Moderator
'Suddenly', 'glance', and 'mutter' are ones I've seen others say, and I also abuse them.

Add to that the word 'mighty' and, especially, 'power' and 'force'. I used to be much worse with those two, going on long rambling explanations of magic where I alternated them (as synonyms) every sentence. Horrible stuff.
 

karriezai

Scribe
I love the Mark Twain quote :] I'm going to do a search on my novel and see how many 'very's I find!

You know, I don't think I overuse adverbs, but I may be wrong.

ETA: I did that search and found 10 instances of 'very' in 14 chapters, but every single instance was a part of the word 'every,' not a standalone very. So far so good!

Words that end in ly, on the other hand... there are a lot. Most of them are 'only' but there are still a lot of adverbs in there!
 
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