Track Down the Weasel Words

CHAPTER ONE

Suppose Joe’s car battery dies. He takes it to a mechanic who tells him to come back in an hour. Joe does, and finds the mechanic smiling as he wipes his hands on a towel. Good to see you, he says. You’ll be happy to know that your bill comes to $2500.00.

Joe gasps. Twenty-five hundred dollars! What kind of battery did you put in?

An ordinary one, the mechanic says. But I also threw in 250 unnecessary parts.

Makes no sense, does it? Joe doesn’t want to pay for parts he doesn’t need. And extra parts won’t help his car run better. In fact, unnecessary parts will only clunk around under the hood, possibly destroying his engine.

Joe demands that the extra parts be removed, the bill be reduced, and he vows never to visit that mechanic again.

Now let’s say Joe writes an article for Southern Life. He sends it to the editor, who sends it back post haste. Upset by her rejection of what Joe considered an excellent piece, he breaks every rule of writer’s etiquette and calls to ask why she rejected his work.

I liked your topic, she says, but your writing was all over the place and I don’t have time to rewrite every article that comes in. You used too many words to make one or two points, and I’m not paying for writing that doesn’t work.

In short, Joe and his mechanic have the same problem.

Ever since man has been putting pen to paper, the goal of the disciplined writer has been to say as much as possible in as few words as possible. We look for verbs with punch, descriptive nouns, and we scratch out dozens of adverbs and adjectives.

My favorite English teacher, the late Janet Williams, used to tell us that we could pay ourselves a quarter for every word we could cut out of our compositions. Back in those days we were tossing in every word we could think up to fill the required amount of pages, so her advice went against our natural instincts. But for those of us who took writing seriously, her advice proved to be golden.

And over the years, I have amassed a mountain of quarters by heeding her advice. I’ve been writing professionally for thirty years, publishing over 120 books as well as hundreds of magazine articles. Why? Because along the way I’ve learned to write tight.

You can, too.

This lesson is a collection of easy-to-remember guidelines, tips, and techniques to help you improve your novel, short story, nonfiction article or book, or term paper. Not every section will apply to your project, but many of them will apply to any kind of writing.

So settle back, grab a marker or pencil, and get ready to revise your manuscript. You’ll be amazed at how easy it is to track down the weasel words that eat away at the effectiveness of your writing.

Prologues

If you’ve written a prologue or introduction to your book or novel, set your emotions aside and look at it with a critical eye. If it

reveals what you’re going to repeat in a later chapter

steals material from an exciting scene in