What I Love Lucy Can Teach You About Writing Tics

8/7/2019 What I Love Lucy Can Teach You About Writing Tics

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Quick, what annoying trait do writers and I Love Lucy share? In the classic

episode “In Palm Springs,” Lucy and her gang drive each other up the wall

with their irritating habits: Ricky’s finger tapping, Lucy’s coffee stirring, Ethel’s

noisy eating, and Fred’s key jingling. Writers aren’t much different. We tap,

stir, slurp, and jingle our way through our stories, gleefully unaware that

we’re driving readers crazy with our personal writing tics.

The very fact that we’re unaware of these tics means they can be insidiously

difficult to find, much less overcome. Technically, a “writing tic” is any

repeated mistake, so the term encompasses everything from major plot

problems to grammar boo-boos. The only remedy for these types of tics is

applied study of the craft, a good editor, and lots of practice. However, some

of these villains aren’t blatant mistakes. Sometimes tics take the seemingly

innocent form of overused words and pet phrases.

Commonly Overused Words

Some words are overused so often that they find their way onto the Wanted:

Dead or Alive list of practically every author, agent, and editor (not to

mention reader). Usually, these are words that are flabby, boring, or just

plain unnecessary (in fact, “just plain” has a pretty good price on its head).

Run a search for words such as very, just, that, quite, nice, some, seemed,

almost, and such. Whenever you find one, gun it down. Nine times out of

ten, you’ll realize the word isn’t even needed to convey meaning or flavor.

What I Love Lucy Can Teach You About Writing Tics

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Personally Overused Words

In addition to generic tics, each author has his own cache of pet words and

phrases, most of which are perfectly fine when used once or twice, but which

become overbearing, distracting, and flat-out nauseating when they crop up

in every chapter. Each author’s personal tics are as unique as the rest of his

writing, and, usually, he’s completely blind to them. For example, “throat,” “quirk,” “jaw,” and “muscles” are words I’ve learned to guard against in my

own writingwords one beta reader refers to as “Weiland Specials.”

This blindness is the very thing that makes these tics so dangerous.

Ultimately, we’re completely at the mercy of our critique partners, beta

readers, and editors to help us identify which words and phrases we’re

overusing. Nothing is more valuable to a writer than a pair of objective eyes.

But we can also get a head start on these tics by utilizing tools such as

Wordcounter.comwhich allows you to search for both overused words and

overused phrases of a specific lengthor the Smart Edit scanning feature in

PageFour, a word processor designed specifically for writers.

Dialogue and Gestures

Some of the most nefarious felons in the underworld of writing tics are those

that appear in our dialogue and our descriptions of a character’s gestures. As

with all tics, overused dialogue phrases (such as you know, look here, and

now then) and overused gestures (shoulder shrugging, eyebrow raising,

and arm crossing) are often unintentional on the writer’s part. But

sometimes we incur deliberate guilt in an attempt to characterize through

consistent personality quirks. This is acceptable up to a point, but be careful

you’re not overdoing your protagonist’s habit of shoving his glasses up the

bridge of his nose. Mentioning this once or twice will be more than enough to

get the point across to readers.

Because writing tics continue to evolve throughout a writer’s life, we’ll

probably never completely master them. But it’s important to be vigilant, lest

our readers get any bright ideas from that I Love Lucy episode and come

after us with a baseball bat!



About the Author: K.M. Weiland grew up chas-ing Billy the Kid and Jesse James on horsebackthrough the sand hills of western Nebraska, whereshe still lives. A lifelong fan of history and thepower of the written word, she enjoys sharingboth through her novels and short stories. Visit

her blogs Wordplay: Helping Writers Become Au-thors and AuthorCulture to read her take on thewriting life.

www.kmweiland.com

www.wordplay-kmweiland.blogspot.com

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What I Love Lucy Can Teach You About Writing Tics