Five Words That Weaken Your Writing
Image Credit: Andrzej Pobiedziski (freeimage.com)
By Marcy Kennedy (@MarcyKennedy)
Last week, I released my newest Busy Writer’s Guide, Grammar for Fiction Writers
Weak words are words that don’t pull their own weight in a sentence. Most of the time, they’re useless. So useless, in fact, that, by taking them out, you make the sentence stronger.
At first this might seem like a strange chapter to include in a grammar book. Technically speaking, there’s nothing wrong with weak words. But this is a book on grammar for fiction writers, and so one of the things we have to look at in terms of grammar is tightening up our writing and bringing it to life by removing useless words from our sentences.
Both weasel words and helping and state-of-being verbs could have been included under unspecific words because of how they tend to tell rather than show, but I broke them up because of the slight differences between them. In this section, I want to focus on five words that are weak specifically because of how vague and generic they are.
Got/Get
Get (and its forms) isn’t always wrong, but you want to be careful because it can lead to confusion. It means “to receive,” “to take possession,” or “to obtain.” However, some people also use it in place of have.
Let me show you how this becomes a problem.
I got five dollars.
Does this mean “I have five dollars,” as in “I currently possess five dollars”? Or does it mean “someone gave me five dollars”?
To avoid vagueness like this, you should rewrite your sentence.
Grandpa gave me five dollars.
I have only five dollars to my name right now.
As you go through your writing, don’t assume that your got sentences are clear. Make sure they are.
Things
Like got, things isn’t wrong, but we often use it as the lazy way to escape putting in the work to define what we mean by things. Things could stand in for problems or reasons, which are two very different things.
When your character says, “I have things to do,” what does she mean? Does she mean she has errands to run? A house to clean? A doctor’s appointment? The only time you should have a character saying they have “things to do” is if they’re being intentionally vague, such as if they don’t want their girlfriend to know that they’re planning a surprise proposal. But even then, why not have them give a more specific excuse?
Moved/Took/Looked
How many times have you written something like this?
He moved across the room.
Grammatically, there’s nothing wrong with this sentence. The problem comes from its vagueness. It doesn’t give the reader a clear picture of the way your character is moving.
Look at these three possible types of movement.
He shuffled across the room.
He stalked across the room.
He sauntered across the room.
In each sentence, we have him moving across the room, but they’re extremely different types of movement. Don’t leave your reader guessing.
Both took and looked fall into the same category as moved.
She took the letter from him.
This doesn’t show us what’s happening.
She snatched the letter from him.
She delicately plucked the letter from him using only her thumb and forefinger, as if she were afraid contact with it would contaminate her.
Two different emotions are behind those ways of taking the letter.
Here’s the one I see most often in my editing work.
She looked at him.
But how did she look at him? Was it a furtive glance from the corner of her eyes as if she didn’t want to be caught? Was she glaring? Was she giving him an I-dare-you-to-try-it look?
None of these unspecific words are technically wrong, but you’re shortchanging your reader and yourself.
For more of Grammar for Fiction Writers
Both books are available in print and ebook forms.
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