Redundant Words
Redundancy: needless repetition; being superfluous and unneeded.
Chop out the superfluous words clogging up your prose and annoying readers.
- shrugged his shoulders; nodded his head; blinked/squinted his eyes [What else would he have shrugged, nodded or blinked?]
- pursed her lips together [You can't purse them apart.]
- rose up [You can't rise down, so the 'up' is redundant.]
- "the reason is because" [Remove the "because", or better yet delete the whole phrase and just state the reason.]
- thought to herself [Who else would she be thinking to, her pet fish or the dust bunnies?]
- "the fact is that" [Just say the fact, don't say that you're going to say it.]
- she waved her hand [Try simply "she waved", unless she is waving something besides her hand.]
- bald-headed man [The reader assumes a bald man is lacking hair on his head.]
- breathing in and out [Can you breathe up and down? Forward and backward? It's enough to just breathe.]
1 comment:
I just tangled with a co-author (not Naomi) about this. He had the guy reaching his hand into his jacket pocket and "a whistle from a man's lips" written in.
My first response was "I don't think he's limber enough to reach withe his feet. And I don't want to know what else he could be whistling with!"
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