10 Things to Eliminate from Your Writing

Occasionally, you might wonder, ‘What should I look out for when editing my writing?’ We all need a reminder every once in a while about all the clunky words, phrases, and bad habits it would be a good idea to remove from our writing to make it clearer and more concise. I’m very close to embarking on some serious editing with one of my pieces of writing and thought it would be a great time to review the kinds of mistakes I should be looking out for.

I should start by saying that you do not have to eliminate every instance of these words and phrases from your writing. Some of them are necessary in dialogue or they could be useful for your style of writing. So, make sure that if you have any of these habits, you are using them intentionally, not as a crutch or to serve as filler if you have a word count to hit.

Without further ado, here are 10 things to eliminate from your writing:

1. Unintentional Usage of Passive Voice

As a writer, you’ve probably heard this one a lot, but it’s a good idea to ensure you know exactly what is meant by ‘passive voice’ because there are cases when it might be beneficial to use it. Rather than telling you to eliminate it entirely, I encourage you to eliminate the incorrect use of passive voice, as it can make a huge difference to your writing.

Take a look at these sentences:

The door was opened by Mary.

As opposed to:

Mary opened the door.

In the first example, the subject of the sentence, the door, receives the action of being opened, which identifies it as being written in the passive voice. In the second example, Mary performs the action and therefore remains the subject. It could be said that the second sentence would always be the correct option, but passive voice can be used stylistically, as it is not necessarily grammatically incorrect or unpleasant to read.

Whenever you want your subject to perform an action to keep your subject as an active participant in the world around it, use the active voice. If the thing receiving an action in a sentence is the focus of your writing, then using the passive voice may be beneficial. In some contexts, such as more formal writing or situations where the performer of an action is unknown or deliberately concealed, the passive voice is usually an acceptable choice, so it’s not always about eliminating it entirely, but knowing when to use it correctly.

2. Unnecessary Dialogue Tags

This is another frequent mention in the writing community. Once again, you do not need to aim for zero dialogue tags, you need to pay attention to the places they may not be needed. For example:

“Don’t put that there!” Sherry rushed over and held up her hands to stop Gina in her tracks.

“No need to shout,” Gina said, clutching the box of party decorations to her chest. “Where should I put it?”

“In the cupboard under the stairs,” Sherry said.

“Oh, are we hiding it?” Gina asked.

“Yes,” Sherry snapped, “you would know that if you had listened to me earlier.”

This tiny bit of text has way too many dialogue tags, which has the effect of pulling the reader out of the scene. In this case, I’ve tried to avoid adverbs, but we’ll get onto that later because it’s a problem in its own right. Since this scene is between two people, it’s easy to correctly assume who is speaking after the first instance, as a new speaker will always start on the next line. After the first tag for each person, you don’t typically need too many more unless a new speaker enters the scene. If you don’t like having no dialogue tags at all, you can replace dialogue tags with actions to signify who is talking. So, that original dialogue might become:

“Don’t put that there!” Sherry rushed over and held up her hands to stop Gina in her tracks.

“No need to shout,” Gina said, clutching the box of party decorations to her chest. “Where should I put it?”

“In the cupboard under the stairs.”

“Oh,” Gina glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice, “are we hiding it?”

“Yes! You would know that if you had listened to me earlier.”

In this example, I’ve removed most of the dialogue tags, including ‘shouted’, which could have stayed, but the punctuation makes it redundant, so it’s a good idea to get rid of it.

3. Adverbs

I’m so guilty of this one, especially in my first drafts, but all the addition of too many adverbs serves to do is make your sentences feel bulky. An adverb is defined as a word that modifies or qualifies a verb. For example, in the sentence, he ran quickly, ‘quickly’ would be the adverb as it explains how ‘he’ ran. The sentence is not necessarily wrong it is just—as is often the case with adverbs—redundant.

The problem with adverbs is that, if you tell a reader ‘he ran’, they will assume he did it quickly, because if he hadn’t, you would have just said, ‘he jogged’, ‘he walked’, or could have said ‘he sprinted’ instead? Adverbs are often used in place of a verb that a writer hasn’t used, or instead of a qualifying metaphor or image, which might be more appropriate than saying, ‘he ran quickly’. So, if you see a sentence with an adverb, take a moment to make sure there isn’t a more appropriate verb you could be using and ensure that if you’re keeping the adverb, it describes the verb rather than repeats it.

4. ‘To Be’ Verbs

‘To be’ verbs refers to the words: are, am, is, was, were, been and being. These words describe people, places, things, and ideas. This is another one I am so guilty of and need to do better with. ‘To be’ verbs can make writing feel dull and unspecific, which is why they should not be used too often or if they can be avoided. They are usually necessary for writing dialogue because it mimics speech, which is usually more relaxed than formal writing. You only need to try to eliminate ‘to be’ verbs in cases such as this one:

He was sad.

How boring and unemotive is that? Instead of using a ‘to be’ verb—in this case ‘was’—this is where the age-old writing advice of, “show don’t tell” comes in. ‘He was sad’ is telling your reader, but the sentence can be rewritten to show your readers that ‘he’ is sad instead:

He turned his face away and wiped his eyes.

Instead of telling your readers that your character is sad, it’s better to harness your inner empath and think about what people (including yourself) do when they are sad and how your specific character might express their sadness. This can be anything from a dramatic outburst of tears to an outburst of rage that ends in silent sobbing. Showing instead of telling allows you to be more specific with your character’s actions and reactions, so ensure that a scene would be better off with a ‘show’ approach than a ‘tell’ one when editing your work.

5. Overly Complex Words or Language

Never use a convoluted word where a basic one will do. Unless you are explaining something technical in a technical environment, most things can be simplified to make them more digestible and allow your writing to read with less resistance. Even though it’s great to read a book that expands your vocabulary, going too heavy on complex language will prevent your readers from connecting to the story since they will spend too much time looking up a word in every sentence. Always opt for easy reading over your favourite words with too many syllables if you can.

6. ‘Some’

This is another habit that I’m guilty of. Since we use this kind of non-specific quantifier so much in everyday life (‘Do you want some?’, ‘It might take some time’, ‘Some people like that’), it’s no wonder it can creep into our writing and make it feel so much more tentative than it needs to. A large aspect of writing well is writing with confidence and using the word ‘some’ in your narrative can weaken it. Instead of saying ‘some’, find a more specific word or phrase to use when quantifying like a few, a couple, a dozen, or a specific number.

7. ‘Saw’ ‘Felt,’ ‘Realised,’ ‘Wondered’

Guilty. I’ve written “she felt”, “they realised,” and “he wondered”, probably thousands of times in my lifetime, knowing that these words have the power to drive a wedge between the reader and the scene. Instead of showing the reader something, I’m telling them what is happening while filtering it through the lens of a specific character. Like most writing mistakes, it separates the reader from what is happening.

Even though this filtering is not always a bad thing, it’s good to know how to fix it if it is causing your writing to have a different effect than you intended. This is an easy fix because instead of a sentence being structured like this:

Robert saw that there was an eagle perched on the chimney.

It could be structured like this:

There was an eagle perched on the chimney.

The same goes for introspection. If we know the book is written from a specific character’s point of view, we can assume that everything narrated has come from that character’s mind, which reduces the need to write ‘felt’, ‘wondered,’ ‘realised,’ and so on. When you have an omniscient narrator, these words may still be necessary, but for first-person and third-person limited points of view, they aren’t needed and will only distance your readers from the story.

8. Unnecessary Similes

A simile is when you describe something as being “like” or “as” something else. “He ran like an Olympic sprinter,” is a simile, but it doesn’t seem to have the power a simile should have, instead it feels redundant and cliché. The same can be said for: “He guided her every move as though she were a puppet on a string”. It works as a simile, but in terms of overuse, is bad.

When making sure your similes are necessary, you should check if they add anything to the initial description by helping the reader to understand what you have said or by setting the tone for the scene or the writing altogether. Even being slightly more specific with classic cliches can breathe new life into them and make them fit better into your writing. For example:

She swam like a fish.

Could become:

She swam like a shark stalking its prey.

Though still a bit cliché, this gives you more information on exactly what kind of swimmer ‘she’ is than the first example to set the tone and add to the description of her swimming, which is what you should aim to do with your similes. If they don’t have a purpose and are only there to add words, cut them.

9. Starting Actions

By ‘starting actions’ I am referring quite simply to constructing a sentence as ‘Marie started to chop an onion on the cutting board’, as opposed to ‘Marie chopped an onion on the cutting board’. Writing that an action has started is not necessary to let the reader know what your character is doing or that they have just started to do it.

10. Unnecessary Words

Considering that context is important, this one should be checked on a case-by-case basis. For example, the kinds of words, phrases, or sentence structures you use will differ when writing dialogue versus prose. A person may get away with saying, ‘It’s really very dark in there,’ but writing the same sentence in your narrative might read as clunky. Look for words such as ‘of’, ‘very’, ‘really’, ‘definitely’, ‘actually’, ‘absolutely’, ‘totally’, ‘quite’, ‘that’, ‘amazing’, ‘stuff’, and ‘thing’, which are the enemy of being concise. When you can think of another word to replace them, or the sentence works without them, say goodbye. If they are not necessary, your writing will be stronger without them.

Ultimately, many things you should eliminate from your writing are based on whether they are intentional. It’s okay to use these words, especially in your first draft, when the quality is less important even if you know you shouldn’t. However, it’s a good idea to ensure your word choices are intentional and serve a purpose while you’re editing, and searching for the things above can help you with that.

What’s your most frequent bad habit when writing?