I’ve been working on editing a novel today – it was that great feeling where you get sucked into a project and don’t want to stop. It felt great. Then I decided, “Maybe I’ll spend a few minutes working on getting rid of my filler words.”
Filler words are those words that 90% of the time need to be cut from a manuscript. It seems like no big deal – I mean how bad can the word “then” be? It’s harmless right? And has actual uses. Until you hit Ctrl+F and find it’s in your manuscript over 300 times – and about 282 of those can be deleted. Those aren’t the exact numbers, but they aren’t far off either. Working through my bespoke list of filler words today shrank my manuscript by over 1500 words. And I’m not done with the list yet. Ugh.
I don’t need spell check, I need a “don’t use that word” alarm.
There are many lists of filler words online – but I have refined my list over the last couple years to specifically focus on words that creep into fiction, and those that I personally overuse. Here are my top five filler word nemeses.
- Just – outside of quoted dialogue (and even sometimes inside of it) this word can be cut 98% of the time.
- Thought/realized – if you’re in a close point-of-view of any kind you can usually write the idea without having to clarify that this particular character “thought” about it.
- Then – as mentioned before this one sneaks into almost all of my narrative prose. You don’t need to telegraph every dang action your characters take. They can just do it.
- So – I start a lot of my dialogue with this word. Not brilliant word craft, Jenel.
- There – While I don’t use this one quite as frequently as the others, it’s almost always in places where I could be more specific, or where I don’t need any word at all.
They say one of the keys to editing is to “Kill Your Darlings.” I think my new motto should be “Kill Your Fill.”
Jenel Alan 