Things to do instead of leaving the house
Aug. 20th, 2005 12:27 pm![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
"How many times in your approx 100K-word manuscript do you use the following words? (My offenses are in parentheses)"
1. eyes (292) - in my defense, eyes are an important plot point...oh bother
2. softly (12)
3. gaze (10)
4. stood (65) - ouch
5. walk (80) - ouch
6. just (173) - ouch, one of my Achilles' Heel words I'm supposed to be watching out for
7. carefully (4)
8. nod (50) - yep, they do too much nodding
9. raise (30)
10. glance (11)
11. suddenly (18) - another one I'm supposed to be watching out for
12. dark (73) - um, there's a lot of scenes in the dark
13. sigh (63) - that's painful; my characters do way too much sighing
"Feel free to report your offenses. :D
p.s. In case you haven't put a ton of thought into this, the easiest way to count is to move your 100K words into a fresh doc, then do a replace of each of the words you're counting, and see how many replacements were made for each."