To be honest, most of them were the word “that”, which clearly I overuse when writing. Still, knowing this now makes the first sweep a lot easier. “Really” and “actually” were up there too.
I tried to load the full MS into a word cloud programme to see if it would highlight the words I overuse, but they seem to automatically take out the basics, “that” being one of them, which rather defeats the object. If anyone can recommend a good (free) world cloud generator, please let me know.
Now I guess I need to bite the bullet and ‘kill some darlings’. I’m too much of a wuss to kill them outright; I place everything in the outtakes file, telling myself it is only temporary, I’m just trying it out to see what it will look like without, of course it will always be welcome back into the fold – and then promptly forget the passage as soon as I return to the main text. So much for loyalty to the words. So fickle…
A side effect has been that I am now the “That Police” with every published novel I currently read. Every time I see one, I question whether it is necessary. And don’t get me started on contractions in dialogue! We all know that when culling, contracting words is a starter for ten, but not only that, without them dialogue can be so very stilted. I just struggled through what would otherwise have been a perfectly decent novel, because I was gritting my teeth every time the author failed to contract them words.
So I am seeing that this is one of the pitfalls of being a writer – you totally screw up your reading by deconstructing all other writing. (The ‘that’ in that line should go…)
