Frustrated Writing
...It's like creative writing, only way more... frustrative. (Not a word.)
If, like me, you do a lot of editing, and if, like me, you do a lot of reading about writing, you may find yourself developing some very particular pet hates.
I've developed a sudden hatred for the word "seems" after discovering I used it 87 times in my 100,000 word novel.
I did a similar thing with the word “very” after reading a post a while back. Don't say “very quickly” was the advice. Say “rapidly”. It's allowed for dialogue and probably for thought processing as that's the way people talk. I wasn't as annoyed about very as I am about seems. Perhaps that's because seems just slips into the sentence, the crafty, sly bugger that it is.
What can we use instead? Looks, appears, sounds, feels, conveys the impression/feeling/sense of... they aren't precisely better, but they are more specific. "Seems" is often completely unnecessary, and can be used to commit that ancient writing sin: showing rather than telling.
For example, one of my dialogue tags said something along the lines of “he seems confused”. How could I be so juvenile? HOW does he seem confused, Kate? HOW CAN YOU TELL? It is much better writing to say, “his brow furrowed”. Obviously.
I left a few "seems" in. Sometimes it creates mystery, e.g "the detail on the painting was so exquisite, that her dress almost seemed to shimmer in the sunlight." You could remove seemed entirely from this sentence, but I think the added sibilance makes it more vivid?
But the word is often just wishy-washy... it doesn't actually SEEM to be important. It is! At one point, my character has her lover dying in her arms and says “it seems so important that he understand...” It shouldn't seem to be unimportant. It is.
Or, so it seems...
If, like me, you do a lot of editing, and if, like me, you do a lot of reading about writing, you may find yourself developing some very particular pet hates.
I've developed a sudden hatred for the word "seems" after discovering I used it 87 times in my 100,000 word novel.
I did a similar thing with the word “very” after reading a post a while back. Don't say “very quickly” was the advice. Say “rapidly”. It's allowed for dialogue and probably for thought processing as that's the way people talk. I wasn't as annoyed about very as I am about seems. Perhaps that's because seems just slips into the sentence, the crafty, sly bugger that it is.
What can we use instead? Looks, appears, sounds, feels, conveys the impression/feeling/sense of... they aren't precisely better, but they are more specific. "Seems" is often completely unnecessary, and can be used to commit that ancient writing sin: showing rather than telling.
For example, one of my dialogue tags said something along the lines of “he seems confused”. How could I be so juvenile? HOW does he seem confused, Kate? HOW CAN YOU TELL? It is much better writing to say, “his brow furrowed”. Obviously.
I left a few "seems" in. Sometimes it creates mystery, e.g "the detail on the painting was so exquisite, that her dress almost seemed to shimmer in the sunlight." You could remove seemed entirely from this sentence, but I think the added sibilance makes it more vivid?
But the word is often just wishy-washy... it doesn't actually SEEM to be important. It is! At one point, my character has her lover dying in her arms and says “it seems so important that he understand...” It shouldn't seem to be unimportant. It is.
Or, so it seems...
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