Filler Words

You’ve probably heard that you should revise to remove “filler words.” There are whole lists of filler words that are commonly overused. For example, “just” is often unnecessary. So is “very.” (There are more colorful ways of indicating that something is ‘very good,’ but that’s a topic for a different day.)

What I want to point out here is that individual writers often have their own personal filler words. There are words and phrases that YOU may overuse even if other writers don’t. For example, I use the qualifier “a little” far too often.

Example 1: “Honora’s eyes blurred a little as she blinked back tears.”

Just a page later, that filler phrase crops up again: “Honora’s angry heart softened a little at the sight.“

In both cases, “a little” is completely unnecessary. “Honora’s eyes blurred as she blinked back tears” and “Honora’s angry heart softened at the sight” both work better.

Words like “feel,” “see,” and “hear” also sometimes place an unnecessary barrier between the reader and the character.

Example 2: “Maddie felt her face begin to burn.”

Try removing “felt”: “Maddie’s face began to burn.” Shorter and stronger!

But in this case, the sentence might be made even more concrete: “Maddie’s cheeks burned with shame.”

“Began to” is another phrase that I sometimes overuse. You do sometimes need words that indicate when something starts, but I don’t need that phrase nearly as often as I think. Consider this example:

Example 3: “A sweet mellowness had begun to fill her bones.”

Try taking out “begun to” and the sentence becomes:

“A sweet mellowness filled her bones.”

I like that much better, because it’s short, sweet, and strong.

Avoid Repetition!

People often talk about filler words as being problematic in that they add to word count without contributing much. But when it comes to you personal filler words, the other problem is that repeating a word too often can annoy readers.

For example, the early versions of my first Regency fantasy romance, Secrets and Visions, frequently used the word “hardly.”

I used “hardly” in constructions like this:

Example 1: “This was hardly the first time I had had recurring visions, of course.”

Or like this:

Example 2: “That hardly seems likely,” Papa said, but he said it slowly, as if he were considering the idea.

As you can see, I used “hardly” as a way of negating something. I could have simply written “It wasn’t the first time I’d had recurring visions” or “That seems unlikely.” Using “hardly” added to the distinctive voice of the manuscript. Christina Morton, the narrator, was partial to that expression. Other narrators of mine wouldn’t have used it.

The problem is that I used “hardly” far too often! In fact, the word showed up 150 times in the second draft of the manuscript. Even I got annoyed by it after awhile. In later revisions, I replaced “hardly” with other constructions, except when I felt it really worked best. The most recent draft of Secrets and Visions uses “hardly” only 59 times.

Every writer has their own filler words. My guess is that you, my reader, don’t overuse the word “hardly” the way I did. But there are probably other words that you use too often. Learning which words you overuse can give you more direction when you revise.