Thursday, March 3, 2011

Don't Lean on Crutches!

I have them. You have them. Even famous writers have them.
It's these:

Well, not exactly these.

Crutches are unneccessary words that spill out of a writer's brain. Sometimes the writer is not aware that these words can be deleted until a friend, critique partner or teacher points them out.

See if you can spot the crutches in this sentence:

Trust that only about a little tells us some (not all) of just exactly what it is that you really think is very important.

Ok, that was way over the top, but you see my point, right?

Here's my personal list of crutches that I lean on regularly. My delete button gets quite a workout when it's time for me to revise a story.

ONLY
ABOUT
LITTLE
SOME
ALL
JUST
EXACTLY
REALLY
THAT
VERY

Make a list of your crutches and keep it in your writing journal.

Then rewrite my weird sentence, please!

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