Clean up the clutter of very, very overused intensifiers

I wish to share a very, very important writing tip that will make a really big difference in your prose. Pretty awesome, huh?

The tip is this: Don’t do what I just did—clutter up a thought with pointless intensifiers.

It’s an easy trap to trip. For more than thirty-five years, I’ve earned my living by writing and I still catch myself gunking up a simple statement with do-nothing words.

Intensifiers are words like “really,” “just,” “only,” “quite,” “bit,” “rather,” “completely,” “extremely,” and the very, very overused “very.”

They are meant to add punch. But most of the time, they plop a plodding pace on your reader. It’s like pedaling a bicycle with the brakes on—you’ll get there, but long after everyone else went home.

What is the difference between “The glass is completely empty,” and “The glass is empty”? One unnecessary word.

Nothing changes without the word “completely.” Empty is empty. An intensifier—such as “really empty,” “totally empty,” or “fully empty”—doesn’t make nothing even more of nothing.

Rather than say, “It was pretty small,” paint a focused word picture by pushing “pretty” out of the way and swapping “small” for a more descriptive image, such as “petite,” “delicate,” “gnome-like,” or “microscopic.”

Instead of writing, “She was very angry,” try “She was furious,” or “She was enraged,” or “Her nostrils flared and smoke curled out of her ears.”

Skip this unimaginative description: “The stadium was very loud.” Play with stronger words like “raucous” or “deafening.” Better yet, let the verbs bolster the action: “Bedlam thundered throughout the stadium,” or “The stadium walls quaked against the reverberating roar of the crowd.”

Ah, verbs. If you’ve propped up your verbs with adverbs—such as quickly, smoothly, or gently—dig through your woodpile of words for a stronger building block.

Instead of the ho-hum sentence, “He ran fast,” grab a stronger action verb. Try “He dashed,” “He sprinted,” or “He blasted out the door like a pebble rocketed from a slingshot.”

And leave that pesky intensifier “very” at home. “She looked very hard” doesn’t paint a sharper word picture. Try “She squinted,” or “She gawked,” or “She peered at him with a focus that felt like laser beams boring through his chest.”

Here’s another tip to clean the clutter: Don’t write, “She went to three different stores.” She went to three stores. Period.

Of course they were different stores. Otherwise, you would have written, “She went to the same store three times” (but not, “She went … three separate times.” You can’t go to the store three times all at once.)

You want to create colorful, exciting writing that readers find impossible to put down. That’s better than slowing them down with very, very boring writing jammed with an awful lot of filler words. Don’t you just really, really think so so very much?

(Learn more writing tips from Laurie Germaine’s packed post from Monday about the rules of writing. Click here: https://bit.ly/2Exr6u3)