21 Words to Cut from Your Writing

Cut these 21 overused and ineffective words from your writing.

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Credit to SkyDilen for my video intro.

[shalaq]

Tip - most of these apply to your narrative writing but not your dialogues. People are sloppy, people use little vocabulary, so keep that in mind.

[krani]

One thing I like to do in place of "suddenly" is simply cut a sentence off and jump to the interrupting action. Like, narration will be describing a scene where the characters are talking about how hard the rain-

The lights went off.

It makes the audience feel the interruption, too, you know?

[aijimatsumoto]

Thank you for encouraging a LOWER word count. One of the biggest mistakes I see new authors make is trying to increase their word count for no reason at all. They end up handing editors these 600-1, 000 page monstrosities and getting rejected almost immediately. I have been a critique partner and beta reader for novels for a long time and I can't stand this new trend. So thank you for the tips on how to shorten things up and still have impact, much appreciated.

[rogeras]

2:07 I just like how you just repeat the word "Just" a lot, it's just very funny

[PayneMaximus]

I think this is not only good for writing stories, but for normal, everyday writing. I can see it applying just fine to work emails.

[bigredracingdog]

THEN - I taught writing for 23 years and my students often began multiple sentences in their narratives with THEN. "Then we went to the store. Then a strange man started following us. Then he started begging for money. Then we tried to find a store employee because we didn't feel safe..."

[sanniepstein]

All words have their places. "Really", for example, has a sour, ears-back sound that can emphasize a peeved statement. It can sound youthful and excited in other sentences. For a character, or an author adopting a persona, it tweaks the tone nicely. Very nicely.

[deathx]

That suddenly became the most extremely helpful video I've seen on writing. I feel like I simply cannot express just how helpful it was. It will help my stories in a really big way. It's very nice, haha

[billfrankfurt]

I’m curious why the views are so low, he’s really good.

I am not a writer, never will be. But, I still enjoy videos like this.

[geriwan]

7:03 Hi Brandon, in Germany we say "Nett ist die kleine Schwester von Scheiße." which translates to "Nice is Shit's little sister." When I was learning my job as a journalist 40 years ago, one of my teachers would share his "3 eternal rules": 1. paint pictures in your readers' heads, 2. be precise, 3. Keep your sentences short and simple, Your writing is not about you showing off your prowess of chiseling tapeworm sentences but about your audience and how to keep them interested. Any text is pointless if nobody reads it. And it's amazing how many people, even pros, don't pay attention to this. So a big thank you from me for carrying on the torch.

[miramari]

I think that when cutting out words like three first examples in narrative is beneficial, using them with intention to distinguish characters in dialogues is great. If one of characters overuses "very" and other "just", after second chapter you don't need dialog tags and everyone knows who is speaking XD

[jonathanfrancesco]

A few disagreements with the gun/car ones. Not necessarily in principle, as I get the idea of adding specificity over vagueness. Not wasting opportunity to characterize, etc. Where I think writers need to be careful is being mindful of the POV. If the POV character is one who would notice things like the type of car or the type of gun, then I agree it's good to include it. But a lot of POV characters wouldn't notice that detail, or if they would, they might not notice it in the moment. This could actually be a good video or two itself.

[justkaeden]

"If you can just cut the word just--"

I GET IT

[MyWorld-eboz]

I like how you approved of just using the word said. I'm afraid to use it because it's too simple, so it's nice to know it's fine to use.

[wonjoonsuh]

I am a writer in Korea, righting in Korean language, which has totally different structure, but it is amazing that I can still benefit a lot from advices in this video.

[lutravelstheworld]

Sometimes the most helpful videos have little views. This video made me a better written already. With the last examples, not only did you explained how to fix the "he smelled..he touched..." issue, but you actually kept your word count low as you were speaking. I appreciate you making it easy for us to understand.

[Millstone]

This is great. I agree with all of them except "replied." As an editor with 25 years of experience, I find this perfectly acceptable and as invisible as "said." However, I do have a problem with "responded" because that bumps me.

[robertowens]

Thank you. I did a word search for "That" in my manuscript. After several tedious hours I had in fact trimmed down about 50%. Spot on. Painful but worth it. The writing is much tighter now.

[HadrianQueen]

Thank you for this! I hate using the words “feel” and “look” and didn’t know how to make a stronger sentence. This helps so much!

[serenity]

Hey, Brandon. I just discovered your videos, and I think they're great. I've been a book editor for 28 years, and you share a lot of the same ideas that I impart to my authors. In doing developmental edits, I tell my authors to give scenes the "George Bailey test." That means, ask yourself: if this scene had never been born, would anyone miss it? I get a lot of positive reactions from that concept. Keep up the good work. I'm going to subscribe to your channel.