Saturday, April 5, 2014

Stronger Writing - Two quick tips

MISCELLANEOUS MUDDY WRITING ITEMS


If your writing seems muddy, or wishy-washy the following items might be the problem.

1) Avoid Unneeded Qualifiers

Maybe, possibly, might, seems, very
(Unless your intent is to make your character look wishy-washy)
- Choose strong words and statements

Be careful - some words don't need any qualifier:
   Pregnant is pregnant; absolue is absolute; unique is unique; fatal is fatal

2) Eliminate Redundancies

Two words often sneak in where one is enough. Watch for them.
- two eyes
- stood up or sat down
- sky above or earth below
- ceiling overhead or floor underfoot
- end result 

1 comment:

  1. oops - I might be guilty of a few of these sometime. The sky above was reflected in the water below, a vivid blue.... ? So a sentence like that would be wrong?

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