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MCS Minute Masterclass #4: Crutch words

12/20/2013

2 Comments

 
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.  
Picture
Above: Word cloud for chapter 1 of PHOENIX (A Black City Novel #2)
2 Comments
Paula Stokes link
12/21/2013 04:17:56 am

Hee. Liz I think it's funny you use the word 'don' a lot. I just had a beta reader point out that I was using that word frequently :-)

Reply
Jessica Spotswood link
12/21/2013 05:21:34 am

Ugh, "just" is an enormous crutch word for me!

Reply



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