Editing 101: Chopping the dead wood

In this, the second of the Editing 101 series, we’ll be looking at ‘filler’ words. These are words that creep into your ms and add no value whatsoever. Some of these filler words also kill your action as you slide into ‘telling’ instead of ‘showing’ and yank you out of deep pov (point-of-view). 

How to edit your manuscript of these slow poisons? Use your Edit/Replace function and scour through your ms. Be liberal with the ‘delete’ key. And no, the editor at the publisher will not do this for you...they will expect you to have done this beforehand (it’s what they mean by a ‘polished' ms). 

Next up in the Editing 101 series - How to do your own developmental edit.

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