More Redundancies And Overwriting That Will Kill the Reading Experience for Your Audience

Getting rid of these will tighten your writing and improve pacing as well

Photo by John Silliman on Unsplash

My recent article on redundancies seemed to strike a clear note with many — and it reminded me to double-check my own writing! But as I continue to edit other people’s fiction, I gather more examples of things you need to look out for as you self-edit.

Over-explaining

There’s a tendency for writers to forget their readers are pretty savvy people, and that half the pleasure of reading is filling in the gaps with imagination. We live in a visual world and we’re used to it now. So here are some examples of what I mean.

Describing every tiny physical action of your character — She turned towards the door, walked across the room, around the long couch, and opened the door to leave.
How about — She left the room? That’s usually all you need.

Adding actions to dialogue that are a repeat of what the dialogue is doing. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” she said apologetically. Or worse — “Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” she said. Her tone was apologetic.

Saying the same thing twice — They were so excited to be given complimentary…