Editing: 110 of 258 pages
When you are writing, it is common to repeat words. During the first draft of your story, the entire goal is getting all the story in your mind onto the computer (or whatever your method of writing may be). During the endless cycle of edits, there are so many elements to adjust, so your writing is more interesting. One of these tasks is to look for words you use repeatedly.
I started making a list of repeated words while writing Book 2 in the Divine Land Of Illur Series. It has become a fun game to find words to add to my list. It is fascinating for me, because it know it will ultimately improve my writing. I am all for tangible methods to get better. The list comprises words I noticed in my books and others discussed on social media.
For the first round of editing, I moved my book from Google Docs to Word. Next, I used search and replace to highlight each word on the list. Did it take a little time to get through my long list of words? Yes, but I also got to document how many times I used the words. While this is a tedious process that I love, you are welcome to use any method you wish to edit. Putting the newly highlighted book back into Google Docs, I can edit while seeing each instance of the targeted words.
I have Pro-Writing Aid and absolutely love it. Showing repeated words is one of the many features of the program. In the 2nd round of editing, I will use the program to find any words I missed.
You will find my repeated words list below with the number of times I used each word in Book 3 of DLI.
- A bit – 1
- A little – 37
- About – 263
- Absolutely – 10
- Actually – 59
- All – 218
- And then – 61
- Around – 244
- Back – 398
- Begin to – 2
- Beginning – 12
- Breath – 34
- Breathe – 6
- Certainly – 20
- Completely – 3
- Could feel – 8
- Definitely – 10
- Feeling – 39
- Felt – 107
- Had been – 51
- Have got – 0
- Have gotten – 3
- In place – 15
- Just – 117
- Kind of – 3
- Knew – 176
- Likely – 9
- Literally – 0
- Look – 389
- Nod – 65
- Probably – 34
- Quite – 28
- Rather – 4
- Reach – 47
- Realize – 47
- Really – 89
- Seemed – 100
- Seemed to – 43
- Smile – 110
- Somehow – 17
- Sort of – 1
- Start to – 2
- Started – 36
- That – 768
- Then – 99
- Thing – 100
- Think – 193
- Thought – 268
- Totally – 0
- Toward – 104
- Used to – 16
- Very – 301
- Virtually – 0
- Wonder – 74