weasel words

[cimorene]

ever since a beta brought it to my attention about a year ago, i have been more conscious of my own tendency to use the particular phrase "a little" way too much in my own writing. i manage to edit it out again as i go along for the most part, now.

now i'm noticing that the roughest drafts i produce have this problem even more seriously: someone needs go to through everything i write with a pointy stick or a whip or a cane or something and chase out every instance of weasel phrases like "sort of", "kind of", "a little", "a bit", "rather" *cough* and "or something", and in many cases also "really" and "very". i mean, fortunately i can do it myself, but i'm appalled at how much of it gets into the rough draft. for that matter, i'm appalled at the thought of how much of this kind of sloppiness i missed before isilya inadvertently sensitised me to it.

i think it's sort of the equivalent of a verbal tic, probably a holdover from the way i talk. example: "the only response to his last question was a shamefully inarticulate sort of purring hum" - what is 'sort of' doing there? nothing. it's completely meaningless.  it might as well be "like" or "um", for all the good it does.

and while "really" and "very" are supposedly intensifying adverbs while the others are the opposite, in the text most of the time they serve the exact same purpose (ie, none) and probably come from the same place - some kind of hesitation in me when i'm composing the sentence. and usually they do the same thing - make the sentence weaker.

Comments

[cimness.livejournal.com]

heeee! thank you very much! and allow me to reassure you - i certainly don't mean that i eliminate all of them from my writing, just that you have to watch where you put them. if you're using them for character voice in the narration, you have to consider if they make the character's voice as opposed to letting them slip through because they're your voice. (i deleted "a little" probably over fifty times from "instantaneous", but there were still plenty of weasel words left in the final draft!)