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One of the things lists like that don't take into account is author voice. For creative writing, as opposed to blogging or writing textbooks/technical manuals, every author has a voice, a personal style. Stephen King abhors adverbs. George RR Martin takes delight in killing off as many characters as possible in as short a span as can be managed. Ray Bradbury strings together words until they become music. But all of those differences are why readers love them. It's their voice. I think a writer needs to care about good grammar in the narrative portions of a story, while dialogue can be looser. I think worrying about repetitive use of certain phrases is fine, and looking for alternatives to the more common action phrases (he looked, she smiled) is wonderful. But I also think that worrying too much about conforming to a checklist runs the risk of ruining that voice. If you've ever done that little test to see who you write like, it's our quirks that make us sound like one of the "name" authors, not how well we pare out the forbidden words of the moment.

Also, writer voice is not speaking voice. If you try to follow the rules of grammar while writing your dialogue, you're more likely to end up with something that sounds stilted or forced.

I've been M.I.A. for a while... and we'll just leave it at that! A lot has been on my mind and one of those things has been editing/revising stories. I've been a chicken wuss as far as asking for help but someone was nice enough to leave me a concrit on another site that prompted me to further research the "how to's" of writing. Anyway; I came across this article that actually pertains to blogging but I figured that it could be applied to story writing as well. The author lists 297 words/phrases that can be either omitted altogether or revised in order to make your writing stand out. Was just wondering how many of you agree with this list and if there are any other flabby words/phrases that he left out in your opinion. http://boostblogtraffic.com/weak-writing/ I applied this to one of my stories and it cut a little over 700 words in a 15000 word story. There's about seven phrases that I have yet to comb through because they were frequent in the document. A lot of the sentences made more sense once I did this edit but there were a couple of phrases that I couldn't see cutting out or revising, particularly in dialogue. What do you think? Do you think that this author is mostly being a nit-picker or is he pretty dead on?

it may sound strange but when writing fiction you want a little flab, its the way we talk. Mr Shane is correct if all you are concerned with is either technical or informative writing, less is more in these types. But flab in recreational writing is good, it softens the story and makes it more conversational which actually holds peoples attention; don't believe me? Use this list on your favorite book, just one page, then on something like a math textbook. See which one has more flab and then ask yourself which one you'd want to read on a rainy saturday. I know, some of us would rather read the math book - but we're weird! Just remember that no rule works everywhere - generalizations are bad!

Hey there you go, accidently flush her down the toilet.

It's almost impossible for me to pick a favorite part but I really enjoyed the way you wrote the whole Coach Walburn suicide and Jack's subsequent PTSD. I've also really enjoyed the evolution of Jack and Kayla's relationship.