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Beginning authors tend to overuse “said bookisms,” which are any word used to replace the word “said.”  For example, in the sentence “I’m ready!” he declared, declared is a said-bookism.

The danger is that using more than a few said-bookisms per page will probably make the dialogue feel melodramatic and stilted (“I’m hungry,” he uttered). Some common said-bookisms are wrong because they aren’t actually a way to speak.  For example, “I knew you’d come back,” she smiled lazily conflates two actions: the speaking and the smiling.   No, she didn’t smile those words.  It would be clearer and more publisher-friendly to either change the phrase to “she said with a smile” or give the two actions their own sentences.

Additionally, animal-sounds are typically very annoying.  It doesn’t take much of him clucking and her purring to sound absolutely ridiculous.

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(Courtesy of xkcd).

Please don’t invent words when an immediate English translation is available.

From Wired.com: “Thomas Edison, never shy about exploiting a situation to his advantage, especially if it could cripple a rival, therefore built the electric chair to operate on alternating current [the preferred system of his rivals]. By associating the Tesla-Westinghouse current with something as unpleasant as capital punishment, Edison hoped to turn public opinion his way. He even suggested replacing the new coinage, electrocution, with ‘to be Westinghoused.’ It never caught on.”

That invented use of “Westinghouse” is brilliant. Which words could you repurpose for your fiction?

If you ever come across one of these words as you rewrite, please replace it with something more specific and spicy.

1. Good
2. Nice
3. Alright
4. Well
5. Mean (adjective)
6. Interesting
7. Vivid (hat-tip to anonymous commenter)
8. Of course (hat-tip to T3knomanser)
9. Smart (hat-tip to Jacob)

Did I forget any words you love to hate?

When you try to sell your work to a publisher or readers, please do not use the word “parody” interchangeably with “comedy.” A parody imitates the style or plays on the conventions of an author/genre /work to make fun of it.  Most comedies are not parodies. There are two common reasons that authors may misuse the word parody…

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This short article will help beginning novelists avoid another five common mistakes that will usually cause publishers to throw out a manuscript.

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Empty interjections, like the word “well,” should rarely start a sentence. As a rule, if you can take out the first word of a sentence, it’s probably a good idea to do so. You should never waste words, but it’s particularly dangerous to do so at the beginning of sentences.

Here are some common offenders:

1. Well
2. You know
3. Yeah
4. Oh
5. Like
6. Umm
7. OK
8. I mean
9. Seriously