Pet Phrases

[beckyminor]

I was just combing through something I wrote, and I realized that just about every door my protagonist encountered was heavy. It got laughable by the end.

So, do you have any phrases you find yourself unconsciously repeating in your writing? I may never pen the phrase "heavy door" again without having a gag reflex.

What phrases do you need to exterminate?

[rossbondreturns]

Often when I'm writing first drafts I find that I've said the same thing to end a paragraph and start the next one just using different words.

Such can be exceptionally annoying.

Which looking at the thread title is more of a pet peeve than a pet phrase.

Let me read my latest script and get back to you.

[beckyminor]

That still works for me. I'm flexible. Pet phrases, bad habits, all qualify.

[metalikhan]

I tend to get too creative with the "said" tag in dialogue. Anymore, I just leave that out as much as possible. I can usually find a way to quote without the tag at all.

First drafts are usually where I commit what used to be called "Tom Swifties" -- "It's not my fault," Eve said adamantly or "Turn off the stove!" the cook roared hotly. Fun & games with adverbs. Not so fun to find them when editing a second or third draft. Spell & grammar checkers don't seem to notice them.

My bigger problem is falling back into old typing habits, especially if the power's down or something is wrong with the computer and I pull out my ancient portable Olympia. (Yep, reel to reel ribbon and lever arm to advance the paper on the roller.) The tab never worked on it, so every indent is 5 spaces. I have the long-ingrained habit of double spacing between sentences and placing a space before and after the em-dash. Hunting those kinds of things down through a long manuscript is a major pain!

[beckyminor]

Yeah, it's taken me a while to retrain my double spaces after end marks. But I'm getting there. But wow! Typing the old fashioned ribbon and arm style! That's perseverance right there.

Adverbs. Yeah. I went through my current manuscript with a can of adverb repellent in hand...it took a week to weed them all out!

The other troublemaker I have is the unnecessary use of the word "that." I think I deleted over 400 "that's" in a run through the same MS.

[metalikhan]

**cringe**

Oh, yeah -- that. Nasty little sneaky word. What's your favorite that exterminator? Raid That? That Black Flag? Roundup That? Or do you use environmentally safe that traps?

[beckyminor]

Bwhahahaha...I'm merciless. A flame thrower does nicely on the "thats," and it sometimes sends other unsavory word choices scuttling for the hills. Like redundant "downs" and "ups." He knelt down? Away with ye!

[Resha Caner]

Yep. That and adverbs were weaknesses of mine as well. For a time, after completing a draft I would go back and do a search on "that" and "ly". It was absurd how many times I used them. Over time, I trained myself to avoid such things. Now they stick out when I read other people's stuff.

Another problem of mine was starting sentences with "And": And it came to pass that the hero did something boldly!

Or, I'd find I was starting paragraph after paragraph with the protagonist's name. Benn did this. Benn did that. Benn went here. Benn went there. Benn had Cheetos (not mango salsa) for a snack.

[waldenwriter]

I ought to have a big vocabulary with the Word-a-Day e-mails I get, but apparently when I'm writing I don't. I overuse words. "Suddenly" is one. I need to look up a synonym for that one.

Metalikhan mentioned dialogue tags ("said," etc). I try not to play with them too much. There are differing opinions about dialogue tags, I think. Some people say not to use "said" all the time and others say sometimes just using "said" is best.

Another bad habit of mine is not varying sentence length. I tend to write really long sentences. I'm not sure why I do this; reading a bunch of classic novels is probably partly to blame.

I also have a similar issue with paragraphs, even in school papers, where I sometimes write a lot of short, "choppy" (my one lit teacher's word) paragraphs. I blame this on some time in the past being told that you should paragraph break whenever you have a new thought. I forget who said that, but I remember it. The same lit teacher who called the paragraphs "choppy" said I should unlearn that idea.

In reference to your character name thing, Resha, what I've been doing with that issue in my novel (which is in 3rd person) is to put the character's name and then refer to him/her with a pronoun for awhile after (he or she). Then, after a bit, I use the name again to remind the reader who the character is.

Oh, and I'm not sure this counts, but back in the day I was not very creative with names. I constantly had heroines named Jessica or Jennifer. I don't know why though.

[raregem]

I have a few pet words, or actions for my characters. I used to be an adverb addict, but two years as a member of the Novel Workshop on writing.com, or AA as I like to refer to it, has cured me of that. In my first drafts, I tend not to be so creative in my sentence structure. A lot of subject-verb setup. Susie threw...He ducked...She ran...But I'm getting good at spotting those spots in revisions.