Have you removed all those unnecessary expletives? Good, time to move on.

Check your sentences and paragraphs

Do they start the same way? While expletives are often the culprit here, there are some other offenders that crop up frequently, including character names and pronouns. You need to go through each page of your manuscript. See how many of your sentences begin with a character name, “he”, she”, or “they”. There are no rules for frequency but if you see the same thing starting sentences repeatedly, its time to change some stuff.

Repetitive Pronouns – He fell up the stairs and she threw the door open. She glared at him as he stumbled, clearly very drunk. She sighed and moved back to let him pass by.

Rewritten – He fell up the stairs and tripped over the step as the door opened. Drunk as he was, a small piece of his heart iced over as he saw the judgment in his wife’s eyes again when he stumbled past her.

Of course, that’s just an idea; how you reword it will depend entirely on point of view and context.

Cut the -ing Words

We use verbs ending in -ing every day of our lives. For example, “I was running around the town, trying to get everything done when this complete idiot came roaring down the road, blasting his horn before slamming into me and throwing me into a hedge”.

No less than six -ing words in one sentence!

Some are known as gerunds, verbs that act as a noun – running, writing, hiking swimming etc., all things that people do. These don’t tend to get overused but the verb forms that end in -ing do.

These verbs, and action words that act like verbs, are written in progressive verb tense and they show an action that carries on for some time, whether it is past, present or future. Nobody really cares about these in a casual conversation between friends but it’s a different story when you put them on your novel. Not only are they wordy, but they are also weak.

Overuse – take the sentence from earlier - “I was running around the town, trying to get everything done when this complete idiot came roaring down the road, blasting his horn before slamming into me and throwing me into a hedge”.

Rewritten – I tried to get everything done before lunch, but the sound of a car horn, brakes screeching and the slam of metal meant that I would meet a hedge rather than my husband”.

Here’s another example that uses an -ing word and an expletive:

There were five boys running down the road.

Rewritten -  Five boys ran down the road.

-ing words or progressive verbs are not bad all the time; sometimes they are necessary. Just be careful; too many of them mean a wordy novel, a need to use verbs that better grab the attention or no real focus on what’s really going on.

Check your manuscript and reword where necessary before you move on.