IWSG – High Frequency Words and the Writers that Use Them

Sigh, will I ever be able to post two consecutive IWSG posts in a row.  Who knows, but I’ve done enough “I wish I could commit to blogging/writing” posts, so this one is different.  This time, I want to talk about high-frequency words.

This is my biggest writing hang-up.  I always have to go back through my final drafts, with my list of repeat words, and remove them.  Sometimes it’s a no-brainer, but more often I’m pulling my hair out deciding whether that ninth occurrence of sigh can stay put, because it actually works, but so does the sigh that I had just decided to leave alone three paragraph’s ago.  It’s tedious, and frustrating, and the only part of writing that I dislike.  How many times are my characters allowed to sigh?  As you can see from the beginning of this post, I do it all the time.

If my characters aren’t sighing or nodding, then they are feeling too much, hearing too much, and sometimes looking too much.  My go to in drafting is to filter details through my characters, along the lines of “he felt _____” or “she heard ______.”  Was and had also pop up quite a bit.  Honestly, my list of high frequency words is pretty long.

I do stop and wonder sometimes, what is too much.  As I’m gnashing my teeth over that ninth “sigh” I glance at the found words panel and see that the story now only has four sighs.  Is that okay.  How many sighs are too many?  How often can my characters get away with nodding?  Or hearing.  Or looking?  How many occurrences of to be are too many?  How much do I need twist my writing to a new turn of phrase, just to eliminate one high frequency word?

There’s probably no answer to that question.  Or, I guess the answer is personal preference.  My opinion, for what it’s worth, is if you like how that particular use of sigh in your story, keep it.  Don’t stress over how many other sighs are floating around, or whatever your high frequency words happen to be.  Speaking of which, feel free to sound off in the comments about your own high frequency words.

Cheers, and hopefully, I’ll be back soon.