Want to be a writer?
Barbara Sachs Sloan
Overused Words to Avoid and/or Use Very Selectively
- Approached
- Are you all right? (this has to be the most over-used question in fiction)
- As (clauses)
- Become/became
- Began
- Eyed/eyeing
- expression
- face
- Felt
- Gave
- Gaze/gazed
- Glanced
- Looked
- Looked like
- Made
- Made a face
- Made his/her way
- making
- Name was
- Nodded
- Reached
- Recalled
- remembered
- seemed
- Shook his/her head
- Shot (as in shot him/her a glance)
- Shrug/shrugged
- Somehow
- THAT (despite Strunk & White's frequently being cited as the bible of writers, their advice on avoiding this word somehow gets ignored)
- Then
- Touched
- Turned
- Was (I hesitated to list this one because it's the most used verb by all of us, but there are times when a much more active, descriptive verb is possible without feeling contrived and should be used instead)
- Watched/watching
- With (prepositional phrases--don't rely on them so much)