What happens when the action is supposed to be fast but the words are slow? You may have noticed your sentences drags. It’s often the result of too many adverbs. Adverbs are a writer’s quick fix: Use an adverb when you have a weak verb. It is like saying a door closes loudly, rather than […]

With this approach, Counter scans for starts to prepositional phrases, possible objects, stacked sentences, compound structures, and other elements of density. You get an idea of how much you’re packing into a piece of prose, and then you go back and edit out overwriting. Now, here’s the thing: Counter doesn’t merely count phrases. It classifies […]

The Texture: How Adjective Density Impacts Your Writing Adjective density make your words feel heavy. The more adjectives you use, the heavier your sentences becomes. They begin to drag. Instead of absorbing the image, reader tally the words. And when you force yourself to check the density, you’re also forced to ask, “does each word […]

Don’t use extremely, really and very, so you’ve heard. These are some of the copyeditor’s go-to’s: Intensifiers undermine your work. They allow verb to do all the hard work. Makes sense on paper. But then when you take out every single one in your manuscript, you end up with something tinny, lifeless. It’s not about […]