It comes to my attention during revision that I overuse quite a few words. Ignoring articles and conjunctions, which shouldn't be an issue if I don't keep repeating the same sentence structure, the worst offenders are "just" and "look."
"Just" is tricky—it sort of adds a vague limit to the sentence, and it's hard to get rid of without getting an uncomfortable twinge. The best trick seems to be unanimously deleting them in editing without paying attention to the context and then adding it back in if I notice it missing. "Quite" and "a bit" are in the same boat.
"Look" gets overused because it's more vague than some other verbs. If I try to plug in synonyms, it doesn't always work for me. It doesn't help that I use it as a verb and a noun all of the time.
This isn't exactly a comprehensive list. It's hard to figure out how much each kind of word should be used. The "glue" that's necessary for correct usage of the English language in general can't be skipped, but exactly how "invisible" is each word? "Said" can be used often and is indeed recommended more than its relatives, but is it the only non-copula verb of its type? How invisible is "look"? "Just"? Others?
Hmm. I do think that you sometimes have a problem with repeating the same words within close proximity to each other, but I've personally never noticed a problem with "just" and "look" for you. In my opinion at least, they're pretty "invisible" words. I like your method of figuring out whether the "justs" should stay in or not. Synonyms for "look" could be glance, glimpse, glare, stare, etc. but you're right, they don't always work in context. (And I probably overuse "glance" a lot.)
ReplyDeleteYeah—I know I did it with "drift" in one chapter of Ace Tribute, but it's difficult to sort out when the word has just the right meaning/connotation in both cases.
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