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[ajhediting]

Reblog so everyone can hear what they need.

[ajhediting]

I am going to take a deep breath and just remind you:

Writing is messy, even for the best authors. It's supposed to feel a little uncomfortable, exhilarating, freeing, natural, and terrifying.

It's supposed to inspire you and feel like a too-heavy backpack.

Sometimes, you're going to love being a writer and sometimes, you'll feel so disconnected, you'll wonder if you were ever a writer to begin with.

Give yourself room to make mistakes and hate your work and return to it with renewed confidence that yes, you will get 1% better next time.

It's what we're all going through. Let's speed up the growing process a little by accepting the entirety of it.

[ajhediting]

Sometimes it's useful to look at your dialogue and ask yourself, "would a real human being talk like that?" But it's also good to ask the follow-up questions of "would the way a real human being talks sound good here" and "does this character actually talk like a real human being or are they weird about it."

[ajhediting]

[ajhediting]

Cliches exist to provide a common narrative language the audience is familiar with, so you can put your own personal spin on it. What does your use of cliche say about you? About your art?

[ajhediting]

One of my favorite “doing things with words” techniques is this thing that Tolkien did a lot where you describe sweeping action with a lot of long, dramatic, byzantine sentences and then end the passage with a v. short simple sentence or sentence fragment.  Like this bit from The Silmarillion:

Then Fingolfin beheld… the utter ruin of the Noldor, and the defeat beyond redress of all their houses; and filled with wrath and despair he mounted upon Rochallor his great horse and rode forth alone, and none might restrain him. He passed over Dor-nu-Fauglith like a wind amid the dust, and all that beheld his onset fled in amaze, thinking that Oromë himself was come: for a great madness of rage was upon him, so that his eyes shone like the eyes of the Valar. Thus he came alone to Angband’s gates, and he sounded his horn, and smote once more upon the brazen doors, and challenged Morgoth to come forth to single combat. And Morgoth came.

[ajhediting]

People sometimes ask me how to do the Internet comedy thing, and the biggest piece of advice I can give – and the one I see violated or misunderstood most often – is don’t step on the laugh.

Basically, since you can’t rely on tone or timing to push a punchline in text, you need to avoid making people keep reading after that punchline has been delivered. If there’s still more text, your readers’ natural inclination is going to be to stifle their visceral reaction with the expectation that there’s still more to come – and when there isn’t, the joke just deflates.

Ideally, the specific word that makes the punchline click into place should be the very last word of the post, or at least the last word of the paragraph. Going even one word beyond that point diminishes its impact.

To pose an example I’ve seen doing the rounds, let’s consider the monkey-with-anxiety meme:

god: i have made Mankind angels: you fucked up a perfectly good monkey is what you did. look at it. it’s got anxiety

Here, the word “anxiety” is the punch. When people quote it or do their own variations, I very often see them render it as “it’s got anxiety now” – and just like that, it’s not even half as funny, because that extraneous “now” dangling off the end is stepping on the laugh.

Obviously, this isn’t always going to be possible without resorting to contrived phrasing, which you also want to avoid because calling attention to the sentence structure is another common laugh-killer, but you should always make your best effort to identify the exact point at which the reader will have enough information for the punchline to snap into focus, and to put that point as close to the end of the post or paragraph as possible.

(This also applies to spoken comedy, albeit to a lesser extent, since you can just pause for the laugh if you need to. Ever wonder why a joke or anecdote isn’t funny when you tell it? Sure, your delivery might just suck, but I find the more common culprit is that you mangled the phrasing and ended up putting the punchline in the middle of a sentence rather than at the end.)

[ajhediting]

Words to use instead of ‘said’

**Using the word ‘said’ is absolutely not a bad choice, and in fact, you will want to use it for at least 40% of all your dialogue tags. Using other words can be great, especially for description and showing emotion, but used in excess can take away or distract from the story.

Neutral: acknowledged, added, affirmed, agreed, announced, answered, appealed, articulated, attested, began, bemused, boasted, called, chimed in, claimed, clarified, commented, conceded, confided, confirmed, contended, continued, corrected, decided, declared, deflected, demurred, disclosed, disputed, emphasized, explained, expressed, finished, gloated, greeted, hinted, imitated, imparted, implied, informed, interjected, insinuated, insisted, instructed, lectured, maintained, mouthed, mused, noted, observed, offered, put forth, reassured, recited, remarked, repeated, requested, replied, revealed, shared, spoke up, stated, suggested, uttered, voiced, volunteered, vowed, went on

Persuasive: advised, appealed, asserted, assured, begged, cajoled, claimed, convinced, directed, encouraged, implored, insisted, pleaded, pressed, probed, prodded, prompted, stressed, suggested, urged

Continuously: babbled, chattered, jabbered, rambled, rattled on

Quietly: admitted, breathed, confessed, croaked, crooned, grumbled, hissed, mumbled, murmured, muttered, purred, sighed, whispered

Loudly: bellowed, blurted, boomed, cried, hollered, howled, piped, roared, screamed, screeched, shouted, shrieked, squawked, thundered, wailed, yelled, yelped

Happily/Lovingly: admired, beamed, cackled, cheered, chirped, comforted, consoled, cooed, empathized, flirted, gushed, hummed, invited, praised, proclaimed, professed, reassured, soothed, squealed, whooped

Humour: bantered, chuckled, giggled, guffawed, jested, joked, joshed

Sad: bawled, begged, bemoaned, blubbered, grieved, lamented, mewled, mourned, pleaded, sniffled, sniveled, sobbed, wailed, wept, whimpered

Frustrated: argued, bickered, chastised, complained, exasperated, groaned, huffed, protested, whinged

Anger: accused, bristled, criticized, condemned, cursed, demanded, denounced, erupted, fumed, growled, lied, nagged, ordered, provoked, raged, ranted remonstrated, retorted, scoffed, scolded, scowled, seethed, shot, snapped, snarled, sneered, spat, stormed, swore, taunted, threatened, warned

Disgust: cringed, gagged, groused, griped, grunted, mocked, rasped, sniffed, snorted

Fear: cautioned, faltered, fretted, gasped, quaked, quavered, shuddered, stammered, stuttered, trembled, warned, whimpered, whined

Excited: beamed, cheered, cried out, crowed, exclaimed, gushed, rejoiced, sang, trumpeted

Surprised: blurted, exclaimed, gasped, marveled, sputtered, yelped

Provoked: bragged, dared, gibed, goaded, insulted, jeered, lied, mimicked, nagged, pestered, provoked, quipped, ribbed, ridiculed, sassed, teased

Uncertainty/Questionned: asked, challenged, coaxed, concluded, countered, debated, doubted, entreated, guessed, hesitated, hinted, implored, inquired, objected, persuaded, petitioned, pleaded, pondered, pressed, probed, proposed, queried, questioned, quizzed, reasoned, reiterated, reported, requested, speculated, supposed, surmised, testified, theorized, verified, wondered

This is by no means a full list, but should be more than enough to get you started!

Any more words you favor? Add them in the comments!

Happy Writing :)

[ajhediting]

About Me

Hello everyone! I’m AJ, and I’d like to edit for you :) But you probably want to know a little bit about me before trusting me with your writing, so here goes…

I love words. I love reading words, learning about words, learning new words. I even love writing words every now and then. That’s why I got my Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies from Carleton University. Applied linguistics, paraphrasing one of my professors, is solving problems that have to do with language. A decent chunk of AL is concerned with understanding how people learn new languages at different stages of life and figuring out the best ways to teach people new languages.

Honestly, I didn’t find AL very interesting. I was there for the other half of the program, discourse studies. Discourse studies, in the words of a friend and fellow student, is “revealing the [underlying] meaning in what people say to each other.” I especially like genre studies, which involves studying patterns between texts of the same genre and, if you’re an educator, teaching people how to write in a specific genre. I really like talking about genre! But I won’t do that here. (Please ask me/talk to me about genre.)

So how does this help you? Well, some editors are very much driven by following rules—rules about verb-noun agreement and dangling modifiers and run-on sentences and lists without punctuation. Don’t get me wrong, I can definitely edit your writing to make sure it follows all the rules. But I also recognize that sometimes you want to bend or break the rules for a certain effect or style. Problems can arise when those bent and broken rules make it more difficult for your reader to understand what you’re trying to tell them. In my mind, editing is all about improving communication—making sure that you get your message across effectively. My studies in genre and discourse analysis have helped me learn to identify what kinds of rule-breaking are acceptable or even necessary for different kinds of writing and what kinds of rule-breaking aren’t appropriate in specific circumstances. Academic papers, for example, should really follow rules for grammatical sentence construction...unless the paper is about how those rules can be an unnecessary hurdle for nonnative writers of the language. It’s all about context.

Speaking of nonnative writers, I do have experience working with nonnative English writers. I only edit English-language writing (it is, sadly, the only language I’m fluent in), but I ask my clients what their native language(s) are and what other languages they speak because that can influence how they write in English. I do my best to balance “correcting” their writing to read more naturally for native English readers against allowing their nonnative voice to shine. The beautiful thing about languages is that they can influence each other in unexpected ways; I try to let my clients’ native languages through when I can.

This has been a lot about my editing philosophy! But I’ll also tell you some personal details. I have a chubby kitty named Nadya who’s on diet food but seems to be happy weighing ~15 pounds. When she sits on me in bed, it’s like having a weighted blanket :) I can read fairly well in Spanish but have a lot of trouble with conversing in it. I’ve learned bits and pieces of other languages, but have yet to get very far in any of them. I like reading and watching horror, especially the kind that makes you vaguely uncomfortable or just feels...off. If you also like that kind of horror, I recommend Coherence (2013). I also like fantasy, scifi, reimagined fairy tales and myths...kind of anything that explores the familiar in new/unfamiliar settings.

If you have any questions for me or just want to chat, either about editing or my interests or whatever, feel free to message me! My inbox is open :)

[ajhediting]

About Me

Hello everyone! I’m AJ, and I’d like to edit for you :) But you probably want to know a little bit about me before trusting me with your writing, so here goes…

I love words. I love reading words, learning about words, learning new words. I even love writing words every now and then. That’s why I got my Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies from Carleton University. Applied linguistics, paraphrasing one of my professors, is solving problems that have to do with language. A decent chunk of AL is concerned with understanding how people learn new languages at different stages of life and figuring out the best ways to teach people new languages.

Honestly, I didn’t find AL very interesting. I was there for the other half of the program, discourse studies. Discourse studies, in the words of a friend and fellow student, is “revealing the [underlying] meaning in what people say to each other.” I especially like genre studies, which involves studying patterns between texts of the same genre and, if you’re an educator, teaching people how to write in a specific genre. I really like talking about genre! But I won’t do that here. (Please ask me/talk to me about genre.)

So how does this help you? Well, some editors are very much driven by following rules—rules about verb-noun agreement and dangling modifiers and run-on sentences and lists without punctuation. Don’t get me wrong, I can definitely edit your writing to make sure it follows all the rules. But I also recognize that sometimes you want to bend or break the rules for a certain effect or style. Problems can arise when those bent and broken rules make it more difficult for your reader to understand what you’re trying to tell them. In my mind, editing is all about improving communication—making sure that you get your message across effectively. My studies in genre and discourse analysis have helped me learn to identify what kinds of rule-breaking are acceptable or even necessary for different kinds of writing and what kinds of rule-breaking aren’t appropriate in specific circumstances. Academic papers, for example, should really follow rules for grammatical sentence construction...unless the paper is about how those rules can be an unnecessary hurdle for nonnative writers of the language. It’s all about context.

Speaking of nonnative writers, I do have experience working with nonnative English writers. I only edit English-language writing (it is, sadly, the only language I’m fluent in), but I ask my clients what their native language(s) are and what other languages they speak because that can influence how they write in English. I do my best to balance “correcting” their writing to read more naturally for native English readers against allowing their nonnative voice to shine. The beautiful thing about languages is that they can influence each other in unexpected ways; I try to let my clients’ native languages through when I can.

This has been a lot about my editing philosophy! But I’ll also tell you some personal details. I have a chubby kitty named Nadya who’s on diet food but seems to be happy weighing ~15 pounds. When she sits on me in bed, it’s like having a weighted blanket :) I can read fairly well in Spanish but have a lot of trouble with conversing in it. I’ve learned bits and pieces of other languages, but have yet to get very far in any of them. I like reading and watching horror, especially the kind that makes you vaguely uncomfortable or just feels...off. If you also like that kind of horror, I recommend Coherence (2013). I also like fantasy, scifi, reimagined fairy tales and myths...kind of anything that explores the familiar in new/unfamiliar settings.

If you have any questions for me or just want to chat, either about editing or my interests or whatever, feel free to message me! My inbox is open :)

[ajhediting]

learning from the reblogs of that post that there's a lot of people out there under the impression that "kill your darlings" means "kill your characters" and that's the funniest possible interpretation of that phrase

[ajhediting]

“But let me give you the dark side of writing groups. One really dark side of writing groups is, particularly newer writers, don’t know how to workshop.

“And one of the things they’ll try to do is they’ll try to make your story into the story they would write, instead of a better version of the story you want to write.

“And that is the single worst thing that can happen in feedback, is someone who is not appreciating the story you want to make, and they want to turn it into something else.

“New workshoppers are really bad at doing this. In other words, they’re really good at doing a bad thing, and they’re doing it from the goodness of their heart. They want you to be a better writer. They want to help you. The only way they know is to tell you how they would do it, which can be completely wrong for your story.”

—Brandon Sanderson, Lecture #1 Introduction, Writing Science Fiction And Fantasy

[ajhediting]

About Me

Hello everyone! I’m AJ, and I’d like to edit for you :) But you probably want to know a little bit about me before trusting me with your writing, so here goes…

I love words. I love reading words, learning about words, learning new words. I even love writing words every now and then. That’s why I got my Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies from Carleton University. Applied linguistics, paraphrasing one of my professors, is solving problems that have to do with language. A decent chunk of AL is concerned with understanding how people learn new languages at different stages of life and figuring out the best ways to teach people new languages.

Honestly, I didn’t find AL very interesting. I was there for the other half of the program, discourse studies. Discourse studies, in the words of a friend and fellow student, is “revealing the [underlying] meaning in what people say to each other.” I especially like genre studies, which involves studying patterns between texts of the same genre and, if you’re an educator, teaching people how to write in a specific genre. I really like talking about genre! But I won’t do that here. (Please ask me/talk to me about genre.)

So how does this help you? Well, some editors are very much driven by following rules—rules about verb-noun agreement and dangling modifiers and run-on sentences and lists without punctuation. Don’t get me wrong, I can definitely edit your writing to make sure it follows all the rules. But I also recognize that sometimes you want to bend or break the rules for a certain effect or style. Problems can arise when those bent and broken rules make it more difficult for your reader to understand what you’re trying to tell them. In my mind, editing is all about improving communication—making sure that you get your message across effectively. My studies in genre and discourse analysis have helped me learn to identify what kinds of rule-breaking are acceptable or even necessary for different kinds of writing and what kinds of rule-breaking aren’t appropriate in specific circumstances. Academic papers, for example, should really follow rules for grammatical sentence construction...unless the paper is about how those rules can be an unnecessary hurdle for nonnative writers of the language. It’s all about context.

Speaking of nonnative writers, I do have experience working with nonnative English writers. I only edit English-language writing (it is, sadly, the only language I’m fluent in), but I ask my clients what their native language(s) are and what other languages they speak because that can influence how they write in English. I do my best to balance “correcting” their writing to read more naturally for native English readers against allowing their nonnative voice to shine. The beautiful thing about languages is that they can influence each other in unexpected ways; I try to let my clients’ native languages through when I can.

This has been a lot about my editing philosophy! But I’ll also tell you some personal details. I have a chubby kitty named Nadya who’s on diet food but seems to be happy weighing ~15 pounds. When she sits on me in bed, it’s like having a weighted blanket :) I can read fairly well in Spanish but have a lot of trouble with conversing in it. I’ve learned bits and pieces of other languages, but have yet to get very far in any of them. I like reading and watching horror, especially the kind that makes you vaguely uncomfortable or just feels...off. If you also like that kind of horror, I recommend Coherence (2013). I also like fantasy, scifi, reimagined fairy tales and myths...kind of anything that explores the familiar in new/unfamiliar settings.

If you have any questions for me or just want to chat, either about editing or my interests or whatever, feel free to message me! My inbox is open :)

[ajhediting]

About Me

Hello everyone! I’m AJ, and I’d like to edit for you :) But you probably want to know a little bit about me before trusting me with your writing, so here goes…

I love words. I love reading words, learning about words, learning new words. I even love writing words every now and then. That’s why I got my Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies from Carleton University. Applied linguistics, paraphrasing one of my professors, is solving problems that have to do with language. A decent chunk of AL is concerned with understanding how people learn new languages at different stages of life and figuring out the best ways to teach people new languages.

Honestly, I didn’t find AL very interesting. I was there for the other half of the program, discourse studies. Discourse studies, in the words of a friend and fellow student, is “revealing the [underlying] meaning in what people say to each other.” I especially like genre studies, which involves studying patterns between texts of the same genre and, if you’re an educator, teaching people how to write in a specific genre. I really like talking about genre! But I won’t do that here. (Please ask me/talk to me about genre.)

So how does this help you? Well, some editors are very much driven by following rules—rules about verb-noun agreement and dangling modifiers and run-on sentences and lists without punctuation. Don’t get me wrong, I can definitely edit your writing to make sure it follows all the rules. But I also recognize that sometimes you want to bend or break the rules for a certain effect or style. Problems can arise when those bent and broken rules make it more difficult for your reader to understand what you’re trying to tell them. In my mind, editing is all about improving communication—making sure that you get your message across effectively. My studies in genre and discourse analysis have helped me learn to identify what kinds of rule-breaking are acceptable or even necessary for different kinds of writing and what kinds of rule-breaking aren’t appropriate in specific circumstances. Academic papers, for example, should really follow rules for grammatical sentence construction...unless the paper is about how those rules can be an unnecessary hurdle for nonnative writers of the language. It’s all about context.

Speaking of nonnative writers, I do have experience working with nonnative English writers. I only edit English-language writing (it is, sadly, the only language I’m fluent in), but I ask my clients what their native language(s) are and what other languages they speak because that can influence how they write in English. I do my best to balance “correcting” their writing to read more naturally for native English readers against allowing their nonnative voice to shine. The beautiful thing about languages is that they can influence each other in unexpected ways; I try to let my clients’ native languages through when I can.

This has been a lot about my editing philosophy! But I’ll also tell you some personal details. I have a chubby kitty named Nadya who’s on diet food but seems to be happy weighing ~15 pounds. When she sits on me in bed, it’s like having a weighted blanket :) I can read fairly well in Spanish but have a lot of trouble with conversing in it. I’ve learned bits and pieces of other languages, but have yet to get very far in any of them. I like reading and watching horror, especially the kind that makes you vaguely uncomfortable or just feels...off. If you also like that kind of horror, I recommend Coherence (2013). I also like fantasy, scifi, reimagined fairy tales and myths...kind of anything that explores the familiar in new/unfamiliar settings.

If you have any questions for me or just want to chat, either about editing or my interests or whatever, feel free to message me! My inbox is open :)

[ajhediting]

Quick editing tip: Passing time

Hey all, here’s a quick tip about showing the passage of short amounts of time in a scene. I see a lot of beats like this:

She hesitated

He paused

A few seconds later

There was a long silence

He waited for her to answer

She didn’t respond

Instead of telling us there’s a brief moment of silence or pause in your scene, try showing us by creating the feeling that time has passed through action, description, or inner monologue. Here are a few examples.

Before:

“Are you coming or not?”

He waited for her to answer, but she didn’t respond.

“Clare? Did you hear me?”

“Huh?”

After:

“Are you coming or not?”

Clare scrolled through her phone, her face illuminating with a eerie blue glow.

“Clare? Did you hear me?”

“Huh?”

Before:

Jared lingered at the suspect’s front gate. If this guy didn’t answer Jared’s questions, he was screwed.

“Hey you!” a voice shouted. “Get off my property!”

Jared hesitated. Finally, he turned to face the man. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

After:

Jared lingered at the suspect’s front gate. If this guy didn’t answer Jared’s questions, he was screwed.

“Hey you!” a voice shouted. “Get off my property!”

Jared patted his holster. He had a gun, but he certainly didn’t want to use it. Taking a deep breath, he turned to face the man. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Not only does creating a pause instead of describing a pause allow your reader to feel the moment more vividly, it gives you a chance to explain what exactly that pause is about. People hesitate, pause, don’t respond, etc. for all kinds of reasons. Give us as much insight as you can into your weird quiet moment.

Of course, you don’t need to do this every single time. Sometimes it’s fine to say “he paused” or “the room was quiet for a moment”—it could be the best choice for that scene. But look back through your draft and see if you’ve used those “telling” descriptions more often than you needed to. If so, try to create the feeling of a pause—perhaps one that gives the reader a bit more information—using these techniques.

Hope this helps!

[ajhediting]

But by the end of my five years [as a copy editor], I felt intellectually and psychologically worn down by the labor I logged on my biweekly timesheets. Whatever roller-rink of neurons helped me spot aberrations from convention had grown practiced and strong, and it was difficult to read any unconventional sentence without reflexively rearranging it into a more conventional form.

Something had shrunken and withered in me, for having directed so much of my attention away from the substance of the stories I read and into their surface. Few people in our office, let alone outside its walls, would notice the variation in line spacing, the fact that Jesus’ was lacking its last, hard “s,” or whatever other reason we were sending the proofs to be printed again—and if they did, who the fuck cared? [....]

I can’t help wondering, though, whether there wasn’t something insidious in the way we worked—some poison in our many rounds of minute changes, in our strained and often tense conversations about ligatures and line breaks, in our exertions of supposedly benign, even benevolent, power; if those polite conversations constituted a covert, foot-dragging protest against change, an insistence on the quiet conservatism of the liberal old guard, and if they were a distraction from the conversations that might have brought meaningful literary or linguistic change about. In fact, I sense myself enacting the same foot-dragging here.

It’s fun—it’s dangerously pleasing—to linger in the minutiae of my bygone copyediting days, even if, by the time I left that job to teach college writing full-time, I was convinced that “correcting” “errors” of convention most readers would never notice was the least meaningful work a person could possibly do. I’m writing this, however, to ask whether copyediting as it’s been practiced is worse than meaningless: if, in fact, it does harm.

*

Do we really need copyediting? I don’t mean the basic clean-up that reverses typos, reinstates skipped words, and otherwise ensures that spelling and punctuation marks are as an author intends. Such copyediting makes an unintentionally “messy” manuscript easier to read, sure.

But the argument that texts ought to read “easily” slips too readily into justification for insisting a text working outside dominant Englishes better reflect the English of a dominant-culture reader—the kind of reader who might mirror the majority of those at the helm of the publishing industry, but not the kind of reader who reflects a potential readership (or writership) at large.

A few years before leaving copyediting, I began teaching a scholarly article I still read with students today, Lee A. Tonouchi’s “Da State of Pidgin Address.” Written in Hawai’ian Creole English, or Pidgin, it asks whether what “dey say” is true: “dat da perception is dat da standard english talker is going automatically be perceive fo’ be mo’ intelligent than da Pidgin talker regardless wot dey talking, jus from HOW dey talking.” The article leaves many students questioning the assumptions they began reading it with: its effect is immediate, personal, and profound.

In another article I pair it with, “Should Writers Use They Own English,” Vershawn Ashanti Young answers Tonouchi’s implicit question, writing, “don’t nobody’s language, dialect, or style make them ‘vulnerable to prejudice.’ It’s ATTITUDES.” Racial difference and linguistic difference, Young reminds us, are intertwined, and “Black English dont make it own-self oppressed.”

It’s clear that copyediting as it’s typically practiced is a white supremacist project, that is, not only for the particular linguistic forms it favors and upholds, which belong to the cultures of whiteness and power, but for how it excludes or erases the voices and styles of those who don’t or won’t perform this culture. Beginning with an elementary school teacher’s red pen, and continuing with agents, publishers, and university faculty who on principle turn away work that arrives on their desk in unconventionally grammatical or imperfectly punctuated form, voices that don’t mimic dominance are muffled when they get to the page and also before they get there—as schools, publishers, and their henchmen entrench the idea that those writing outside convention are not writing “well,” and therefore ought not set their voices to paper at all. [...]

Like other emissaries of the powerful (see, e.g., the actual police), copy editors often wield what power they do have unpredictably, teetering between generous attention and brute, insistent force. You saw this in the way our tiny department got worked up over the stubbornness of an editor or author who had dug in their heels: their resistance was a threat, sometimes to our suspiciously moral-feeling attachment to “correctness,” sometimes to our aesthetics, and sometimes to our sense of ourselves. [...]

There’s a flip side, if it’s not already obvious, to the peculiar “respect” I received in that dusty closet office at twenty-two. A 2020 article in the Columbia Journalism Review refers casually to “fusspot grammarians and addled copy editors”; I’m not the only one who imagines the classic copy editor as uncreative, neurotic, and cold.

I want to say they’re the publishing professionals most likely, in the cultural imagination, to be female, but that doesn’t feel quite right: agents and full-on editors are female in busty, sexy ways, while copy editors are brittle, unsexed. Their labor nevertheless shares with other typically female labors a concern with the small and the surface, those aspects of experience many of us are conditioned to dismiss.

I’m willing to bet, too, that self-professed “grammar snobs” rarely come from power themselves—that there is a note of aspirational literariness in claiming the identity as such. [...]

It makes me wonder if, in renouncing my job when I left it—in calling copyediting the world’s least meaningful work—I might have been reenacting some of the literary scene’s most entrenched big-dick values: its insistence on story over surface (what John Gardner called the “fictional dream”), on anti-intellectualism but also the elitist cloak of it-can-never-be-taught. The grammar snob’s aspiration and my professor’s condescension bring to mind the same truism: that real power never needs to follow its own rules. [...]

Copyediting shares with poetry a romantic attention to detail, to the punctuation mark and the ordering of words. To treat someone else’s language with that fine a degree of attention can be an act of love. Could there be another way to practice copyediting—less attached to precedent, less perseverating, and more eagerly transgressive; a practice that, to distinguish itself from the quietly violent tradition from which it arises, might not be called “copyediting” at all; a practice that would not only “permit” but amplify the potential for linguistic invention and preservation in any written work?

--- Against Copyediting: Is It Time to Abolish the Department of Corrections? Helen Betya Rubinstein on Having Power Over More Than Just Commas

[ajhediting]

Weak Words To Cut

Here are some weak words than you can often remove to strengthen your writing. I have made these changes as I edit my own novel, so I included examples from my writing to show you the difference.

When editing and cutting words, we are not talking about dialogue because everyone has a unique way of speaking, and it’s important to keep true to their voice.

Note: these are all general guidelines, and you don’t have to use all or any of them. Creative writing gives you a creative licence to choose how you write. Do what works best for you. Always.

Suddenly: technically speaking, everything happens suddenly, so use the word sparingly or it will lose its effect.

I don’t remember ever seeing a man in such little clothes before, and I suddenly despised the one piece left. I don’t remember ever seeing a man in such little clothes before, and I found myself despising the remaining piece.

Keep: When it disrupts your character’s life, and you want your reader to really take notice.

Cut: if removed and there is no change, then it’s not necessary

Then/Next: this is typically a filler word. All events happen in a sequential state, so it’s not always needed.

Then She was gone, her steps echoing through the halls.

Keep: You want to keep the word typically when something is changing in action, description, etc.

Cut: If removing the word does not change the meaning, then cut it. Typically if this word starts the sentence, it’s unnecessary.

Just: this is a filler word, and can almost always be removed.

I was just a game to him, nothing more.

Keep: if removing it makes your sentence confusing or changes the meaning, then keep it. Usually using the word words well as a limiter word. (Eg. it’s just me and my dogs tonight)

Cut: when it’s unnecessary and changes nothing.

Really/Very: these are weak qualifying/descriptive words, and you can absolutely find a better synonym

Your mother is really nice lovely.

Keep: typically these words are fine to keep when not used to enhance an adjective. (Eg. very next day, really think, very back of…)

Cut: if it’s being used to enhance a weak adjective, cut it and find a better word.

Is/Was: this is usually a passive voice, which isn’t usually the best for fiction novels, active voice is always preferred. Naturally this is a verb that you can’t cut from all places, so here are some tips.

Everyone was too busy focusing on their shopping to notice a human sliding between sales booths. Buyers and sellers occupied themselves with their shopping, too focused to notice a human sliding between sales booths.

Keep: when delivering information quickly its always best to just state the facts, so don’t worry about trying to find flowery words to describe everything.

Cut: If you can show what the person or object is doing instead of simply saying it, then change the sentence.

Started: every action has a start, so don’t write it unless you can tell me why it’s important now to know that’s it’s started.

The boy started to rant in his native tongue. The boy ranted in his native tongue.

Keep: if your scene is being interrupted or is still unfinished, then go ahead. This one is a little harder to see sometimes, so just see how you feel with it in vs removed.

Cut: it’s it’s unnecessary information, and nothing changes to the story or sentence when removed, axe it.

Seemed: again, this is more of a show don’t tell kind of thing

Time seemed to slow slowed as I held Vera tight against me.

Keep: if a character knows something intuitively

Cut: if you can show why the character is perceiving what’s happening

Definitely: this is typically just confirming facts that are already known to be true. Repetition is unnecessary without a purpose.

He definitely saw me, but I wasn’t mad about it. (This instance can for sure be removed, it’s unnecessary. However, I want this emphasis here, so I chose to keep it)

Keep: if it’s your character who is confirming facts as 100% accurate and ridding previous doubt

Cut: remove and nothing changes

Somewhat/Slightly: usually this is used when only trying to use a partial effect of a word, so the easiest fix is to change the word that it’s describing.

I looked away, slightly embarrassed.

Keep: if the words is truly the best way to describe what was happening in the sentence.

Cut: when you can use a better word to describe your action/emotion/whatever to be more accurate or it’s unnecessary.

Possibly/Likely/Probably/May/Might: much like some of the other weak words, these are just filler. Something either is or isn’t, and it’s best to describe here you can.

Probably Not with the way he was speaking to her.

Keep: if your character isn’t sure of something

Cut: if you can describe what’s happening, or it can be removed without changing the meaning

Somehow: this is usually an indicator of missing information

I thought I was an average girl in every way, and now I was somehow the first human to ever survive. (I don’t use somehow often. I am keeping it in this instance because none of the characters know how it happened yet.)

Keep: if your character is missing the information and doesn’t know how something became true or transpired

Cut: if you can explain how something came to be.

Adverbs: this is a great category of words to use in writing, but if used too often, it can distract from the story. A good rule is finding an even balance between adverbs and active verbs.

I squeezed her cold hand tightly in mine and made a promise to save her. Clenching her cold hand between mine, I promised to save her.

Keep: if it improves your writing by making it more clear and efficient.

Cut: if it makes more sense to use active verbs to describe what’s going on.

Totally/Completely/Absolutely: all filler words

He grinned at me, his plate almost completely full while mine was near empty. He grinned at me, his plate still full while mine sat devoid of even a crumb.

Keep: if it’s important to the story to know with 100% certainty, and this word gives the most accurate description

Cut: whenever it’s not needed

Thing/It: missing information/ lack of description

I was just accepting all the things they said as truth. I was just accepting all their fantastic explanations as truth.

Keep: if your character doesn’t know what it is

Cut: whenever you can find an actually description or name the object

Have any more words you think should be added to the list? If something does not make sense or you have questions, let me know down below.

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Happy Writing!