On Your Mark, Get Set, Delete

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is over. You’ve completed the challenge—writing 50,000 words in a month. Congratulations!

Now comes the real work. Making every word count. Getting rid of the words that don’t.

Case in point: “began.” They began arguing. He began acting suspicious. I began to get irritated.

(The truth is, when I get irritated, I don’t begin to get irritated. I just am.)

Another word to think about deleting is the word think! If you’re writing a memoir and write “I think I was about five-years-old,” I suggest instead, “I was about five-years-old.” A small difference, but cleaner.

And just for fun, how about that word just? It’s a word that just isn’t needed. Search your manuscript – you might be surprised how often you’ve used it. Try deleting just a few of them; you probably won’t even miss them.

Enough of that. I mean it. “I wish that we could … whatever.” How about “I wish we could …”?

If you don’t miss it – if your story reads (just) as well without it, you will (begin to) write a much tighter, better story.

Take that.