One Of America's Greatest Tragedy

It is the biggest mistake writers can make. If you don't know the value of your words and how economy makes them more important, then you are doomed to drag your work along in strings of unnecessary words which kill the story. Perhaps the single greatest tragedy is the word THAT. If you can rewrite a sentence without the word THAT, it shouldn't be there.

Example, "The girl thought that she would die." Why is the THAT there? whenever I work on a manuscript, the first cursory search I do is for all the THATs. Half will be eliminated, another large group will be changed to WHICH. The problematic THAT is the one which comes right after a verb. "He stated that he could go." (He stated he could go) Taking a look at those THATs will help streamline the reading of your work. …show more content…
"She entered a hall adorned with pictures on the walls." Speed it up! "She entered a hall with pictures on the walls." A lot of this goes back to your voice. Don't use a vocabulary you wouldn't use in your daily life. The more professorial you are, the more your voice will sound as such, but if you aren't professorial, and you attempt to come across that way, you will do nothing more than be verbose.

Also, action is always better than telling the reader what's happening. "He stood dazed, blood falling from his nose, not sure he could take another right jab," is a lot more graphic than, "He was punched and his swollen nose bled." The first sentence is longer and I don't want anyone to think I am