"just" an irritating problem

[LaRascasse]

I did some self editing on a story I'm finishing up at the moment and found one annoying problem - the overuse of the word "just". I looked at the first page on my doc file and found it 13 times. I trimmed it down to 4.

Anyone else have such problems unique to your writing?

 

[RejectReality]

How about having that exact same problem?

I'm constantly going back and removing occurrences -- even from dialogue, which I normally don't like to touch.

I have a couple of others, but they aren't coming to mind at the moment.

 

[damppanties]

How about having that exact same problem?

Yeah. Me too.

 

[lovecraft68]

Yes and they seem to "evolve" as I go along.

At first- pre-lit- it was actually and almost. The great Paco fear brought those to my attention when he was nice enough to take a look at my first lit story.

The word I seem unable to avoid these days is "Even"

He even let me borrow....

It's a word that does have a use and that example is a proper use of it, but like the word "that" it can be eliminated most of the time.

But it seems I think like that and it comes out while I'm flowing, I probably knock a few out of every story when I'm done.

I have had my bouts with Just as well.

 

[RoyceConnors]

I find I use certain words more frequently, adjectives mostly and look for similar words to use. I hit the thesaurus and try other words instead. My goal is to not use the same word within 100 words written.
There is a writer's challenge to write something and not use the same word twice. That made a difference for me.

 

[sr71plt]

I have to cut "now" out a lot.

 

[lovecraft68]

"Hell" is another one. I use it a lot in dialogue, "Hell, Mary I even fixed your car."

That's a twofer right there! That is a sentence I fixed about an hour ago, although in this case I felt the even was justified.

 

[steve44uk]

"As..." used to denote simultaneous actions or thoughts.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I did some self editing on a story I'm finishing up at the moment and found one annoying problem - the overuse of the word "just". I looked at the first page on my doc file and found it 13 times. I trimmed it down to 4.

Anyone else have such problems unique to your writing?

Yeah, and every story it's a different thing. Anybody know of a good tool for detecting this stuff automatically?

 

[Darkniciad]

This has several different reports it generates. Finding an individual word you overuse throughout a document isn't one of them, but it does find and highlight words and phrases repeated within close proximity on the "repeated words and phrases" report. It also singles out every repeated series of 2+ words that you've used in the "repeated phrases summary"

http://prowritingaid.com/

The "overused words" report does single out "just" and report how many times you've used it, as well as several other common words. If your problem word is in that list, you can track down how many times and where they are pretty easily ( highlighted with color coding )

This is my last step before sending a story off for a second pair of eyes ever since I found it.

 

[sethp]

I love reading and thus writing these...

He said irritably. She said sarcastically. Said John, angrily. Jesus said, sanctimoniously. Mary said, whorishly. lol. I'm told, it's wrong, but if these are wrong, I don't want to be right!

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

AND is the word I watch for.

 

[oggbashan]

Then I use 'then' too much.

 

[RoyceConnors]

AND is the word I watch for.

One of my peeves as well. I see two ands, then it's comma time, or start another sentence to avoid run-on sentences.

 

[lovecraft68]

One of my peeves as well. I see two ands, then it's comma time, or start another sentence to avoid run-on sentences.

I've gotten better with those. I used too many ands so the sentence would go forever. I've learned to drop the and, insert a period and get two sentences from it.

Whether they are grammatically correct or not sentences that go for so long I stop and say "Is this one sentence" are distracting.

40-50 word sentences are flat out annoying, to me anyway.

 

[Ironiclaconic]

I think I have rid myself of most of these pests now, but swarms of "actuallys" used to infest my writing, and I had to start setting traps to catch other vermin: "such", "often", and "because" were the worst, and every now and then I still find a nest of "seems" burrowed into the woodwork, and I have to call an exterminator.

 

[Ironiclaconic]

I love reading and thus writing these...

He said irritably. She said sarcastically. Said John, angrily. Jesus said, sanctimoniously. Mary said, whorishly. lol. I'm told, it's wrong, but if these are wrong, I don't want to be right!

It's not wrong, but it's a crutch often used by beginning writers in place of better ways of conveying emotion and tone. I still use constructions like that on occasion if I want to convey tone in what I want to be a fast-paced dialogue scene, but usage should be choice, not habit.

The biggest problem is that half the Hemmingway-wannabes in the world learn "don't use -ly" as a guideline, but memorize it as a rule, and think they are being pros when they call it out in the writing of others, not knowing that Dickens, Nabokov, Wharton, etc. peppered their writing with such phrases and are regarded as masters of the English language. Nabokov has one sentence in Lolita drowning in -ly words that I swear he wrote just to tweak noses.

 

[Tx Tall Tales]

Yeah, the curse of the 'weak' words. I suffer from it, but try to clean most of them up before submitting.

just, pretty (it was pretty good), almost, are just a few.

That and the run on sentences - while, as, in particular.

Part of my final edit search and fix process.

 

[PennLady]

I find myself in my latest story having characters starting a lot of statements with "So..."

So, I keep going back to fix that.

 

[PennLady]

I love reading and thus writing these...

He said irritably. She said sarcastically. Said John, angrily. Jesus said, sanctimoniously. Mary said, whorishly. lol. I'm told, it's wrong, but if these are wrong, I don't want to be right!

Like a lot of things, those are good from time to time or for a certain effect. But when you use them too often, they get boring.

 

[laptopwriter]

I have two words I have to cut out a lot...

I just use really a lot; I also really use just a lot.

 

[RoyceConnors]

I love reading and thus writing these...

He said irritably. She said sarcastically. Said John, angrily. Jesus said, sanctimoniously. Mary said, whorishly. lol. I'm told, it's wrong, but if these are wrong, I don't want to be right!

I've stopped using descriptors in my stories completely. I set the scene up and play it out, dialogue and all. Readers know who's talking and the emotional impact is already there, so it's easier to write continuous dialogue, with little story in between.

 

[sr71plt]

I'll use descriptors occasionally when one will help keep the flow going while conveying the emotion being shown more fully and without fuss than showing it would. I pretty much don't think real hard to avoid using anything that pops into my mind as maintaining voice and story flow.

I ran a mainstream writing contest recently in which a judge, when returning her assessments, said she downgraded for using any descriptor other than "said." I think that's a bit too pedantic and if I'd known this was her hardnosed mantra I wouldn't have picked her as a judge.

 

[TE999]

'However', 'suddenly' and 'said' ( as used repeatedly in dialogue) have plagued me in the past; now I'm on the lookout for them yet they still slip by on occasion.

 

[RejectReality]

I only bother with a few things that begin to nag at me when I read through old stories ( which I do fairly regularly ) or those that tweak my editor. I've only had two words ever mentioned by readers, and both of those were in the context of me using them in lots of stories, rather than using them too many times in one.

And one of those is the word I started substituting for the word the first reader was complaining about *laugh*

I know my vocabulary isn't strong enough to get rid of everything. I need those adverbs and qualifiers, because the few strong verbs I know don't come to me when I need them a lot of the time.