Words you don’t need
Hi everyone,
Today, I wrote some of my missing scene in The Search For Magic. I’m still trying to find conflict while making it the best day of my main character’s life, sort of. I’m searching for micro-tension to keep the scene moving forward. Warring emotions. Friction between people. Warring ideas. That sort of thing. I still intend to have conflict between some secondary characters but I haven’t got to that part of the scene yet. I’m happy with what I’ve written.
I, also, continued with my micro-tension draft and found and revised four more pages that lacked it, either in part or in whole.
I didn’t get around to continuing with the outline of my new novel but that’s okay because I was thinking about it while exercising which always helps me. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll get to it. It depends on how long it takes for me to get through my micro-tension pages.
I’m also deleting words as I read through my random pages draft to make room for the added micro-tension. Previous drafts targetted cutting words at a line level-drafts 6.0 to 6.5. So I don’t have a lot left to can delete without modifying the story. But I still found some. So far I’ve deleted about 300 words but that’s not enough to make up for what I added, yet.
In previous drafts I deleted filter words or phrases that can easily be shortened eg ‘won’t be able to’ = ‘can’t/won’t’ or to find = discover. I also got rid of repetition, eg, she rubs her eyes in fatigue. “I’m tired.” This is a clunky example, but you get the idea. The character should either rub her eyes in fatigue or say I’m tired. Not both.
Even though I have deleted so many of these words’phrases in previous drafts, I’ve still managed to find some. They aren’t as obvious. For example, if I have two sentences about the weather side by side, I delete one.
At this stage, I don’t want to change the story so I’m left with this line edit deletions but I’m not worried. I’ll be about 700-800 words over when I’m finished adding in all the micro-tension. I deleted 300 words in the first 25% so I should be about to make between 1,000 and 1,200 cut words by the time I’m finished. Not bad when over the course of 5 drafts ,I already deleted 28K words.
In the vein of cutting words, here are some words that you may not really need.
Words to do a document search for to make sure you absolutely need them:
that
then
and (surprisingly we can over use this. If you don’t, that’s fine just know it’s a possibility.)
slightly/rather/a little
just
start/begin
really/very
wonder/think/know
see/notice
feel
The words ‘that’, ‘really’ and ‘just’ are words I use a lot and have to delete. You’ll have your own set. That’s fine. Just remember to do a document search for all your crutch words when doing line edits.
Of course, there are exceptions to all the words. Sometimes a word everyone says to delete is the perfect word in the perfect place. Also, words in dialogue do not follow these rules. If a character abuses the word ‘just’ that’s fine, just make it deliberate and only for one character.
Anyway, that’s all from me tonight.
Talk to you tomorrow.
Happy writing,
Joanne.
Micro-revision draft: page 23
