It's Friday, which means it's time for our weekly minute masterclass! Today we discuss crutch words.

When editing your manuscript, keep an eye out for crutch words. These are words that an author leans on and will use repeatedly throughout their manuscript, often several times on each page and in close proximity to each other. Common crutch words are: looked, glanced, dragged, pulled, grabbed, eyes, smiled, sighed. This also applies to phrases as well, for example 'rolled his eyes' and 'raised his eyebrow', or variants thereof. 

It'll become apparent as you read through your manuscript what your crutch words are, but if in doubt, a handy tool is Wordle.net. Simply copy and paste your MS into the application and it'll generate a pretty word cloud, giving you an excellent visual representation of which words you overuse. Once you've identified your crutch words, delete as many as possible.  

Welcome to our weekly MCS Minute Masterclass. Today we're looking at blending description with action.

Description is important because it sets your scene and helps transport the reader to your book's universe. When writing description, it's usually best to incorporate it into the flow of the story instead of halting the action for a paragraph like: She stumbled across [a thing.] The thing was [description.] It had [description] and wore [description.]

Consider the difference between:

"I see the edge of the cliff. Below me is the river, and jagged rocks. The night air is crisp. As I jump, I think about whether things might have been different if I had just told the truth from the beginning."

and

"My left foot lands at the edge of the cliff. I push off with all my might, rocketing my body out toward the middle of the river, far away from the jagged rocks below. As I plummet through the crisp night air, I think about whether things might have been different if I had just told the truth from the beginning." --Paula Stokes, Liars, Inc., (HarperTeen, 2015)

In a way, it all goes back to showing and not telling. Instead of playing tour guide, let readers experience your world on their own as they move through it . Happy writing!