Cisco Writers Club

Counting Weasel Words

by Vera Day https:// twitter. com/ VeraDayAuthor

I’m currently selfediting my next mystery novel, Who Framed Flora?, before I submit it to the publisher’s editor. I’m trying to get rid of the weak words, you know, those weasel words that don’t add any significant meaning to a sentence and make for wordy prose. Specifically, I’m trying to reduce the number of times I use actually, basically, began, believed, down, felt, heard, huge, just, knew, large, little, looked, maybe, many, might, mostly, noticed, probably, quite, ran, rather, realized, really, saw, seemed, some, started, that, then, thought, totally, up, very, virtually, walked, was, were, and wondered.