The Seven Deadly Sins of Writing

[Candy_Kane54]

I just recently purchased the book:'The Seven Deadly Sins of Writing: Common Pitfalls of Prose . . . and How to Avoid Them - Angie Kiesling' and discovered that I was performing just about all of them in my writing.

In particular, I am very bad at using the word 'that' a lot. In fact, one of my recent submissions has over 700 of them in it. I am currently going through it and find that most, if not all of my extraneous 'thats' precede pronouns (e.g., 'that I,' 'that she,' 'that they,' etc.). So far, I'm removing more than 90 percent of them as I go through the story.

I'm also finding that I'm using the construct 'that was xxxxed' which can easily be replaced with 'xxxxing' without changing the meaning of the sentence.

I now understand why misusing 'that' leads to lazy writing. I'm going to try harder to make sure I'm more conscious of that in the future. I'm also going to go back through all of my stories and see how many I can get rid of.

Your thoughts?

 

[MelissaBaby]

I just recently purchased the book:'The Seven Deadly Sins of Writing: Common Pitfalls of Prose . . . and How to Avoid Them - Angie Kiesling' and discovered that I was performing just about all of them in my writing.

In particular, I am very bad at using the word 'that' a lot. In fact, one of my recent submissions has over 700 of them in it. I am currently going through it and find that most, if not all of my extraneous 'thats' precede pronouns (e.g., 'that I,' 'that she,' 'that they,' etc.). So far, I'm removing more than 90 percent of them as I go through the story.

I'm also finding that I'm using the construct 'that was xxxxed' which can easily be replaced with 'xxxxing' without changing the meaning of the sentence.

I now understand why misusing 'that' leads to lazy writing. I'm going to try harder to make sure I'm more conscious of that in the future. I'm also going to go back through all of my stories and see how many I can get rid of.

Your thoughts?

Once you start looking for those sort of extraneous words, you find them everywhere.

I've become aware that my characters had a bad habit of starting to do things rather than just doing them.

I have asserted my authority and told them to just get on with their business.

 

[MillieDynamite]

That and then really hurt a story. It isn't so good either.

 

[ElectricBlue]

The word combination "and then" is the first "find" search I do in any draft - one or the other will do, but rarely does a sentence need both. I've nearly trained myself to eliminate them in the raw draft, but every now and then they creep through and I allow them to stay.

If there's a comma, one of them goes. Or the comma goes.

'Just' is another one, but there are so many common phrases that use it: just in time, just in case - it's like a buzzing fly, annoying.

I use this all the time now: https://worditout.com/word-cloud/create so I can see in an instant over-used words.

 

[lovecraft68]

What I find interesting is the things people are mentioning here, 'that' using began, starting, etc instead of just doing, and other issues are things that I discovered, along with a litany of other things, just by continuing to write over the years and striving to improve.

I'm not a big supporter of how to write books or articles. This could be me because I'm the type that learns everything by doing, not reading up, or someone else telling me.

Writing, like everything else, is a learning curve and you learn through time and experience.

All the 'sins' in this book I already committed and still do on the fly, but now know to get back and fix.

Time reading could be time writing, sounds corny, but that's my philosophy

 

[lovecraft68]

That and then really hurt a story. It isn't so good either.

Then has a double shot of bad, not just using it to often, but its easy to use it in place of than...I still catch that a lot in my writing, sometimes I have to freeze on the sentence and focus on which it should be.

 

[SamScribble]

There is a world of difference between writing fiction and writing non-fiction.

When writing non-fiction, you are (normally) striving for clarity and brevity.

When you are writing fiction, you are writing fiction. The rules are few. The 'sins' are few. Let the smart arses who would have you believe otherwise take a hike.

 

[SimonDoom]

I commit many of these "sins," sometimes inadvertently.

Most of them can be boiled down to a simple guideline: get rid of the excess, including, especially, unnecessary words.

I'm better than I used to be, mostly because of more experience writing.

 

[astushkin]

I've become aware that my characters had a bad habit of starting to do things rather than just doing them.

I have asserted my authority and told them to just get on with their business.

LOL! That's too funny!

Agree on the extraneous words in non-fiction and most fiction. I have the opposite issue: since I am trying with my writing to reproduce the style of 18th and 19th century prose in order to enhance my historical settings, I ADD extraneous words and increase sentence complexity. My Word program is constantly highlighting phrases with suggestions on how to make them more concise.

Thus, I'll have to go with "there are few rules in fiction" and do what is right for my story.

 

[Djmac1031]

Interesting. Something for this newbie to look out for. I'm starting to understand the "less is more" approach when it comes to certain words and phrases, and eliminating most of them as I edit. I'm sure I still have a lot to learn.

 

[jaF0]

That and then really hurt a story. It isn't so good either.

Well. There's that then.

 

[mynameisben]

I agree with you 100%, Candy. "That" is a horribly overused word, and it's a good idea to root it out of your work wherever possible. The good news is, "that" is pretty easy to eliminate from your writing, and in most cases, you don't even need to restructure your sentence to get rid of it. There was a time when my writing suffered from too many that's. But once I became aware of it, my vigilance to avoid "that" became so second nature, I no longer even have to think to avoid this nasty little pitfall.

"That" is one in a family of horribly overused words you should work hard to avoid. Others are "just", "very", "and", and "then." A less common word I find myself overusing, to my everlasting chagrin, is the word "absolutely." "She was absolutely stunning." "I am absolutely positive." "The dinner was absolutely perfect." The only positive I can say in my own defense is, at least I'm not using the word "literally."


Ben

 

[RunningJib]

I'm curious

I'm curious, what does Kiesling think of inappropriate word usage such as "totally?" That is, "I was totally lost."

 

[jaF0]

Absolutely, totally unnecessary.

 

[RunningJib]

Touché

However, I see it all too often and still drives me fucking nuts.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'm curious, what does Kiesling think of inappropriate word usage such as "totally?" That is, "I was totally lost."

I think most editors and good writers would counsel against using wimpy and unnecessary modifiers. If you are lost, you are lost, and telling the reader you are "totally" lost adds nothing.

Same thing with words like "really."

HOWEVER,

Words like these are appropriate in dialogue, because people do talk this way, and they can be OK in narrative when one of the purposes of the narrative is to establish the personality or background or character of the narrator.

I sometimes use useless modifiers like really or totally when I'm trying to establish a certain casual style that I think is consistent with what's going on in the story.

A style book I like (I almost wrote really like) is Dreyer's English. He has a section on what he calls "The Trimmables" and there are good examples that most of us probably wouldn't even think about.

added bonus -- the word bonus implies added

capitol building -- a capitol is a building

closed fist -- a fist is closed

exact same -- exact is redundant

kneel down -- nobody kneels up

There are many other examples.

He's the chief copy editor for Random House, so he knows what he's talking about.

 

[Panty Wrangler]

Then has a double shot of bad, not just using it to often, but its easy to use it in place of than...I still catch that a lot in my writing, sometimes I have to freeze on the sentence and focus on which it should be.

Yep, Then and than confusion is a pet peeve of mine.

Totally agree the story is more punchy when you've stripped out the filler words.

 

[PennameWombat]

I think most editors and good writers would counsel against using wimpy and unnecessary modifiers. If you are lost, you are lost, and telling the reader you are "totally" lost adds nothing.

Same thing with words like "really."

HOWEVER,

Words like these are appropriate in dialogue, because people do talk this way, and they can be OK in narrative when one of the purposes of the narrative is to establish the personality or background or character of the narrator.
<snip>

This. These exist because people do say them. I sometimes look for the grammar check complaining when I write dialogue, at which point I know I've done it the way I intended .

"Off of" is another one. I found it regularly in my narrative in my earlier writings, because I grew up where it was a commonly used phrase. Now, some of my characters continue to use it.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I think most editors and good writers would counsel against using wimpy and unnecessary modifiers. If you are lost, you are lost, and telling the reader you are "totally" lost adds nothing.

Same thing with words like "really."

HOWEVER,

Words like these are appropriate in dialogue, because people do talk this way, and they can be OK in narrative when one of the purposes of the narrative is to establish the personality or background or character of the narrator.

I sometimes use useless modifiers like really or totally when I'm trying to establish a certain casual style that I think is consistent with what's going on in the story.

A style book I like (I almost wrote really like) is Dreyer's English. He has a section on what he calls "The Trimmables" and there are good examples that most of us probably wouldn't even think about.

added bonus -- the word bonus implies added

capitol building -- a capitol is a building

closed fist -- a fist is closed

exact same -- exact is redundant

kneel down -- nobody kneels up

There are many other examples.

He's the chief copy editor for Random House, so he knows what he's talking about.

"Whole entire"

I just want to smack people who say that.

 

[MetaBob]

I just recently purchased the book:'The Seven Deadly Sins of Writing: Common Pitfalls of Prose . . . and How to Avoid Them - Angie Kiesling' and discovered that I was performing just about all of them in my writing.

In particular, I am very bad at using the word 'that' a lot. In fact, one of my recent submissions has over 700 of them in it. I am currently going through it and find that most, if not all of my extraneous 'thats' precede pronouns (e.g., 'that I,' 'that she,' 'that they,' etc.). So far, I'm removing more than 90 percent of them as I go through the story.

I'm also finding that I'm using the construct 'that was xxxxed' which can easily be replaced with 'xxxxing' without changing the meaning of the sentence.

I now understand why misusing 'that' leads to lazy writing. I'm going to try harder to make sure I'm more conscious of that in the future. I'm also going to go back through all of my stories and see how many I can get rid of.

Your thoughts?

Once you start looking for those sort of extraneous words, you find them everywhere.

I've become aware that my characters had a bad habit of starting to do things rather than just doing them.

I have asserted my authority and told them to just get on with their business.

The word combination "and then" is the first "find" search I do in any draft - one or the other will do, but rarely does a sentence need both. I've nearly trained myself to eliminate them in the raw draft, but every now and then they creep through and I allow them to stay.

If there's a comma, one of them goes. Or the comma goes.

'Just' is another one, but there are so many common phrases that use it: just in time, just in case - it's like a buzzing fly, annoying.

I use this all the time now: https://worditout.com/word-cloud/create so I can see in an instant over-used words.

Yep yep yep yep, but always with caveats.

In my most recently published novel:

We walked our dogs later that morning.

Okay, I get that. Mother, can we at least massage him?

etc.

Nothing wrong with "that" in these examples, but I used "that" 432 times in ~41K words; more than 1% of the words were "that". 88x "just", 7x "and then", 16x "actually", 37x "really", 0x "totally". I'm curious to know what the total distribution of words is, 'cuz 432 seems like a lot. Anyone know a tool?

I'm thinking pronouns, aaaaaaand ... 534x "it", 793x "her". Yeah, ~5% of the words in that novel were either "her", "it", or "that".

 

[MetaBob]

Correction: Write Words, was looking at the wrong tab. Write Words has a frequency counter

Thank you, Erozetta, I will check it out.

Request object error 'ASP 0104 : 80004005'

Operation not Allowed

/word_count.asp, line 105

I'm guessing that ~41K words is too many for their tool to handle.

 

[ScrappyPaperDoodler]

The words 'just' and 'little' are my current crutches (particularly the latter). I have no clue how it infiltrated my writing but is has been more than just a little annoying.

 

[LAHomedog]

Books, guidelines, lectures, lessons learned in class can be useful but it is important to remember this:

There are NO absolutes in art. None. What worked for Rembrandt did not work for Picasso. What worked for Hitchcock did not work for Spielberg. What worked for Dickens did not work for Dashiell Hammett.

There are no absolutes in art. Anyone who tells you so is full of shit. Sure, there are road maps to technique and craft. It is important to learn the craft. Back to Picasso: If you look at his early work, he is a superb draftsman and could draw and paint realism with the best of them. He used the foundation of his craft to launch his art.

I'll get off my soapbox, but I hate it when talented, beginning artists start to box themselves in with so-called rules. Learn them. Absorb them. Get a 3-D perspective of your craft and then find your own voice.

If that stunts your writing, don't use it. If it enhances your writing, use it.

I use "fuck" a lot. That breaks a ton of rules, and a bunch of people hate it. An example, "But I don't fucking care if I use fuck in my fucking stories whether it makes them shit-a-fucking-brick over it."

I think that is a good example of how that can make a difference in how you use the rules because that, at the end of the day, is irrelevant to your art, and that is all I have to say on that.

 

[PoisonPen33]

"So," "Yeah," and "Well." I tend to overuse them during dialogue, especially to begin sentences.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Books, guidelines, lectures, lessons learned in class can be useful but it is important to remember this:

There are NO absolutes in art. None. What worked for Rembrandt did not work for Picasso. What worked for Hitchcock did not work for Spielberg. What worked for Dickens did not work for Dashiell Hammett.

There are no absolutes in art. Anyone who tells you so is full of shit. Sure, there are road maps to technique and craft. It is important to learn the craft. Back to Picasso: If you look at his early work, he is a superb draftsman and could draw and paint realism with the best of them. He used the foundation of his craft to launch his art.

I'll get off my soapbox, but I hate it when talented, beginning artists start to box themselves in with so-called rules. Learn them. Absorb them. Get a 3-D perspective of your craft and then find your own voice.

If that stunts your writing, don't use it. If it enhances your writing, use it.

I use "fuck" a lot. That breaks a ton of rules, and a bunch of people hate it. An example, "But I don't fucking care if I use fuck in my fucking stories whether it makes them shit-a-fucking-brick over it."

I think that is a good example of how that can make a difference in how you use the rules because that, at the end of the day, is irrelevant to your art, and that is all I have to say on that.

+1! Picasso's later art is eye-straining at first, but it was built on a solid ability to render a scene properly.
.

On a sidenote, there's an old story about a grandmother trying to correct her granddaughter's grammar.

"Trudy," she said, "there are two words you should never use. One is 'great' and the other is 'rotten'."

The little girl thought for a moment before replying. "OK, Grandma. What are the words?"