Decluttering Your Writing | Filler Words, Fodder, And More

Spring cleaning is upon us!

It's a great reminder to downsize and tidy up your space as we enter a new season. Spring cleaning can go beyond dusting baseboards and donating clothes you no longer wear. In fact, this decluttering mindset can be helpful for writers who need to tighten up their manuscripts.

In this post, I'm sharing some of the things that might be creating clutter in your writing.

Remember: there can be a time and a place for all of these things, but everything in moderation.

Filler Words And Phrases

Starting off, the thing that inspired this post: filler words and phrases.

Filler words take up space and can make your writing feel sticky to read. Cutting these words helps make things smoother and tighter.

A few examples include that, really/very, then, and things in the vein of started to or began to.

That is one I've been particularly cognizant of since my time as a copy editor for my college's student newspaper. A lot of the time, that can be removed without impacting your reader's understanding of the sentence.

The red velvet cake that Emma's grandmother made was rich and flavorful.

The red velvet cake Emma's grandmother made was rich and flavorful.

Nothing changes with the removal of that.

Really, very, and similar words might be signs to use a stronger word in their place.

The music in the car was really loud.

The music in the car was blasting through the speakers.

This can also apply to adverbs. e.g., said quietly vs whispered.

Speaking of said, said isn't dead, despite what you've probably heard for years. Said is useful in the right circumstances; however, there are times it can be swapped out for a more impactful dialogue tag or omitted altogether.

Phrases like began to or started to can feel redundant. Chances are, if a character is doing something, we can assume they started to do it then.

Jo began to wave their arms when they saw Miranda approach the gate.

Jo waved their arms when they saw Miranda approach the gate.

You also have directional examples, such as down or up. Phrases like "I sat down on the rug" can be trimmed to "I sat on the rug."

Deleting filler words and phrases like these can improve your pacing even down to a sentence-by-sentence level.

Overcrowded Casts

As you're editing your WIP, another thing to be on the lookout for is unnecessary characters.

I have a separate post going into more depth here. The long and short of it is that when you have too many characters, it can become difficult for readers to keep track of who's who. In many of these cases, the job being done by two characters can be done more effectively by one, so it might be wise to consider merging these two characters into one or cutting one of them.

Infodumps

Whether it's a character's backstory, historical context, explaining the science or machinery behind a device, or worldbuilding in a fantasy setting, writers have a lot of explaining to do in order to get their readers up to speed. We're basically throwing them into a world we've created with little more than a travel brochure of a blurb and a pat on the back, so this exposition offers more guidance as they orient themselves.

When the exposition goes from guidebook to textbook density, that is the sign of an infodump. By giving your readers so much to process at once, you run the risk of their skimming the information to get back to the story or DNFing it altogether.

I know you've spent so much time developing your story's world and doing the research, and you're likely excited to share that with your reader. But they're here for the story, not the background info.

Too much exposition brings your writing to a standstill. Clear your reader's way by cutting it down.

One trick I've learned with this is to simply read your WIP without making revisions, taking note of where your eyes begin to glaze over. Even with that buffer of knowing that you've been reading this story countless times already, recognizing where you grow disinterested can help determine where you're infodumping.

Get To The Point

Small talk can be annoying, but compulsory in some situations. It's when we move beyond "How are you?" and "Lovely weather we're having, eh?" and "Catch the game last night?" that our ears perk up.

(Okay, for what it's worth, if that game is football, I am already invested in the convo especially from a fantasy standpoint but I digress.)

You ever notice how that doesn't happen in fiction?

Often, this kind of fodder is omitted, with characters getting straight to the juicy parts of the conversation—aka, the parts that matter to the plot.

Unless it's relevant in that moment, you can skip the rigamarole of water cooler chats and get straight to the point.

Writing is very much a matter of getting words on the page—but it's also a matter of removing words from the page.

Whether you are a bona fide overwriter or are an underwriter with a bare bones draft, you'll likely have some tidying up to do for clarity's sake and to keep your story moving at a steady clip.

Decluttering your story doesn't have to be overwhelming. Just like spring cleaning your home, it helps to have a list of areas to tackle and polish until they sparkle.