Thursday, May 9, 2013

Blog Chain: His eyes narrowed... again. (Overusing words/scenes)

Source

Christine asks: What are your "go-to" scenes or phrases? You know, the ones you have to remind yourself NOT to use too frequently? What do you do to keep yourself from being overly reliant on them?

If I have any go-to scenes, they're probably revolving around relationships. I feel like I'm always writing a falling out or a making up. This means there are a lot of repetitions I have to watch out for in my writing, like fuming and eyes narrowed.

I find the synonym project by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi to be the most useful tool in revisions for getting rid of these little glitches. They have a book out called the Emotions Thesaurus that is an essential reference tool. In the sidebar at that link, you'll also see character traits, physical traits, setting, and symbols. They've got unique ways to say pretty much everything!

What scenes or phrases do you over-use?

Catch up with Christine Fonseca to see yesterday's blog chain post,

and check out Demitria Lunetta's tomorrow.





Katrina's blog pic