That, Just, To Me, Only, Seriously, Honestly. I am working on excising these words popping up everywhere. I apparently like using adverbs. It appears that I just like filler words a little too much, honestly. They creep in and slow down my writing. Like ants on a countertop, they are everywhere and hard to get rid of. Knowing they are there helps but its a decided display of the difference between the spoken and written word.
We all speak with adverbs. We have littered our language with so many unnecessary words. I wonder if we would comprehend a spoken word free of passive voice, filler words and adverbs. They can be useful, in the correct circumstance but they are manuscript killers. They bog down a reader without helping them gain anything from it.
Its all part of learning the craft and getting this kind of feedback has me excited. It arms me with a way to write better. Increasing your knowledge of your weaknesses is a great way forward. You can take that information and build off of it improving your craft. That is my ultimate goal to write stories well enough people enjoy reading them.
If you can’t afford an editor, don’t have literary masters to beta read or just want to hone your work before letting anyone see it there are online tools. Of course, I’ve spoken of Grammarly, I use it as a live editor of sorts. There are others. You struggle with passive voice and adverbs? Try HemingwayApp.com. You want something to help pare down your verbosity and difficult language? WordRake is an effective program. Grammar, readability, style, word usage? Maybe AutoCrit, it’s not free but it’s a good program. Or you could try ProWritingAid.
The feedback you get won’t tell you how much fun your book was to read but it will give you an idea where problems may exist. I think the human touch is still a necessity but it hard to get someone to take time to critique your work. I’ll keep working on weeding out the bad words and replace them with good words.