Tuesday, January 18, 2011

little sir echo and the dreaded word echoes

does any kid still sing this song? I loved it as a kidling! I asked Maddy about it and she looked at me like I was crazy. I guess they're too busy learning songs about not liking candy corns and so on. but I am already off track. this morning fab author Allison Pang was on Savvy Authors sharing her wisdom about word echoes. you know what those are. the words that we apparently love so much that we cram them all over our manuscript and don't realize it until we analyze our manuscript and see them. they weaken a manuscript and show a skimpy vocabulary. my big word is like and all of its benign forms. I though I was being mindful of echoes but I wasn't. go figure. I've got like all over the place. I'm in like with like. (echoes!) but when I go through and weed them out, my manuscript works much better. there's less Shaggy Speak (with all the likes) and more evocative dialog and prose. although Shaggy Speak is kinda cool, just not in my manuscript. I have another word that I love to stash in my draft like a hoarder so I'll be busy getting rid of them. it's work but definitely worth it. go check out Allison's tips for echoes at the link above!

1 comment:

  1. I LOVE doing a word search for my two favorite words: "had" and "that"

    They "had" to go, becomes "they went"etc.

    They walked to the beach "that" had lots of sand. (LOL) becomes "they walked to the sandy beach."etc.

    Once they're gone, the rest reads easily.

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