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Tools to Activate Your Writing

Writers work hard to polish every word before submitting a manuscript. The admonition to “show don’t tell” pushes authors to strike passive language from the text. However, even in the editing process, it’s easy to get caught up in the story. Imaginations lock onto plots and characters. Sharpened editing skills become distracted and gloss over embedded passive or redundant words.

Find and Replace Tool
One useful means to weed out flaccid words is the Find and Replace tool found under the “Edit” button on your word processing software’s tool bar. After editing your manuscript, search out the words: is, am, are, was, were, and all verbs including the words be, being or been. Find one word at a time. The impressive plot twist on page 39 won’t sidetrack this tool. It cold-heartedly points to what you tell it to find. Don’t try to eliminate every occurrence of these words, but use this process to flag passive language problems.

Depending on the length of your manuscript, you can either make changes as you find the word, or highlight questionable text to be considered when reading a copy of the printed manuscript. Change text font to red, highlight it with a bright color using the highlight feature, or mark it in a way that catches your attention. Choose a color that makes it clear the word needs attention.

For the purposes of this article, I’ll use two paragraphs from my novel-in-process titled, The Seventh Gate. Note how the red font stands out. The next time I read this manuscript, the colored words will grab my attention.

Waking up to this reality wasn’t much better than her recurring nightmare. Every night she relived the invasion. Winged Yemen poured through her village and took what they wanted. Including her. The horror on her mother’s face stayed with her. The last touch of her mother’s hand forcibly wrenched from her grasp; her father calling after her until the sharp sickle shaped jaws of a Yemen invader caught his upper arm. His arm hit the earth with a sickening thud. Blood spewed across his shirt, shot into the hideous face of the Yemen drone and coated her mother’s tunic.

She pushed the dreadful sight from her mind. She hadn’t seen either of her parents since that day. The best she could do now, would be to honor their memory by living as she’d been taught. Elita dedicated the day to the memory of her father, wiped the sweat from her face and pushed to her feet to stand at the window.

Vague Words
Once you’ve highlighted or eliminated passive “be” verbs, set the search for non-specific words like very, really, good, alot/a lot, still, and the similarly vague words: some, all, most, many, more, enough, several, fewest, fewer, few, etc. Highlight unclear words and make a plan to replace them with, specific words. Use a thesaurus to find a substitute or eliminate the word. If your inner writer rebels, ask this question. What picture does the word in question portray? Can you see really? How about some? Replace them with tangible words.

Personal Pronouns
Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to highlight every personal pronoun in your text. However, basic rules of grammar dictate proper usage and the “Find and Replace” tool can help writers take a step back and catch mistakes. I’ve included this list of pronouns as a refresher.

Nominative Case Singular: I, you, he, she, it
Nominative Case Plural: We, you, they

Objective Case Singular: Me, you, him, her, it
Objective Case Plural: Us, you, them

Possessive Case Singular: My, your, his, her, its
Possessive Case Plural: Our, your, their

Refer to the above list as you read through these basic guidelines:

A personal pronoun following the word as: must be in the nominative case.
A personal pronoun following forms of be: the nominative form of the pronoun follows the verb be: It is I (not me)
Personal pronouns following the word than: should be in the nominative case

When writing dialog, colloquial speech doesn’t always adhere to the rules. If unsure about word choice, rewrite the sentence to circumvent the problem.

Set your Find and Replace tool to find the word as, be or than and watch for pronoun usage.

Unnecessary Direction: Back, up, down, above, below
In an effort to make actions clear, it’s easy to add redundant words already implied in the action.

I marched back onto the porch.
I marched up onto the porch.
I marched down onto the porch.

If you’ve set the scene, the reader understands where the porch sets and knows if the character visited the porch previously. Words explaining what the reader already knows are redundant. Search them out, and get rid of them.

Avoid Using “Then” to Move the Story Along
Another word to find and replace is then when it is used to move the story forward. New writers tend to use this crutch to make a transition from action to action. For example:

Brian gave him a long look, then shouldered the body and staggered under the dead weight.

Eliminate the word then and the action becomes vibrant. The unnecessary word dilutes the image.

Clutter Words: Had, That, At, Just, As, While, The
Remember, not every use of the words listed above needs extermination. Read the sentence without the word and see if it works.

She daubed at the tears streaking her cheeks.
She daubed the tears that had streaked her cheeks.
She just daubed the tears streaking her cheeks.

If the sentence reads: She daubed tears streaking her cheeks, the action is clear. The Find and Replace tool picks out clutter words and helps focus on whether they are necessary without getting lost in the story. Eradicating these words strengthens the active voice in your manuscript. It may require rearranging word order or finding a more specific verb. It’s worth the effort.

Catching Redundant Words
Redundancy involves more than using the same word multiple times, but for this article I’m narrowing the focus to repeated words. One tool I recommend is www.wordcounter.com. This site allows you to cut and paste text into a window and ranks the 25 most frequently used words in any given body of text. (You can set the counter for more or less words.)

Within the sample text presented earlier in this article, the words Yemen, face and mother were each used three times. Arm, memory, day, push and father showed up twice. Equipped with this information, I set Find and Replace to locate the redundant words and highlighted them with red font for future changes.

First Word Of The Sentence
After using the Find and Replace process, go through the text and highlight the first word in each sentence. Use a new color. When you’ve completed this task, read the highlighted words in order. In the following example, the words read: waking, winged, including, the, the, his, blood, she, she, the, Elita.

This quick tool picks up redundancies. In this short scene, the word “the” starts two sentences following one another, and two more begin with the word “she.”

Before and After
Here’s what my text looks like before editing. Every highlighted word needs attention and requires a decision. It’s easier now that the words stand out from the rest of the text. Different colors work like flags.

Before:

Waking up to this reality wasn’t much better than her recurring nightmare. Every night she relived the invasion. Winged Yemen poured through her village and took what they wanted. Including her. The horror on her mother’s face stayed with her. The last touch of her mother’s hand forcibly wrenched from her grasp; her father calling after her until the sharp sickle shaped jaws of a Yemen invader caught his upper arm. His arm hit the earth with a sickening thud. Blood spewed across his shirt, shot into the hideous face of the Yemen drone and coated her mother’s tunic.

She pushed the dreadful sight from her mind. She hadn’t seen either of her parents since that day. The best she could do now, would be to honor their memory by living as she’d been taught. Elita dedicated the day to the memory of her father, wiped the sweat from her face and pushed to her feet to stand at the window.

After:

Waking to this reality wasn’t much better than the recurring nightmare holding her dreams hostage. Every night she relived the invasion. Winged Yemen poured through her village taking what they wanted. Including her. Mental images of the horror on her mother’s face stayed with her. Hatred burned as she considered that last maternal touch forcibly wrenched from her grasp; her father calling after her until sharp sickle shaped jaws of an invader caught his bicep and severed his arm. It hit the earth with a sickening thud. Blood shot from the hideous mandibles of the drone like a grape in the winepress and sprayed her mother’s tunic.

Elita pushed the dreadful sight from her mind. She hadn’t seen either parent since, but did her best to honor them by living as they taught her. Wiping sweat from her forehead, Elita dedicated the day to the memory of her father, and rolled from her cot to stand at the window.

Reducing redundancy can be tricky business. After making changes, run the text through www.wordcounter.com again. Sometimes in an effort to eradicate redundant words, we replace one repeated word with another. Wordcounter helps keep our word choices fresh.

In this final draft of the sample paragraphs, three words appear twice: Mother, father and Elita. First words of sentences now read: Waking, every, winged, including, mental, hatred, it, blood, Elita, she, and wiping. Added details and changes in word order depict a clearer picture, but the word count actually dropped.

About the Author
Author and freelance writer, Donna Sundblad, resides in Florida with her husband, Rick. Her creative writing book, Pumping Your Muse, is available in paper or ebook format. Check her website for more information at www.theinkslinger.net. Donna also edits for and co-owns Team Spirit Critique and Editing, LLC.