As I approached the final edit of ‘Bed, Bath, & Blackmail’, I loaded my manuscript into a website called ‘Wordcounter.com’, a most useful tool.This website came back with a list of my most-used words, along with their quantity. Imagine my surprise to see how often I used ‘when’, ‘about’, ‘back’, ‘down’, and ‘time’.
This tendency to use the same words over and over is a trap that writers groups won’t catch, because they see only a chapter or two at each meeting.
Most often, these redundant words … and the phrase that goes with them … can simply be eliminated. On occasion, another word brings more clarity to the context. My total word count for the story has been reduced by 3,000 words, resulting in a tighter story.
For the writers reading this post, I encourage you to give wordcounter.com a try. You’ll be amazed at the result!
Debi Graham-Leard 