Along the lines of the “Ly” check, here are some other writing exercises I am currently inflicting on my novel:
- Weed out the “to-be-verbs”: is, am, are, was, were, be, being, and been.
- Turn ‘ing’ into ‘eds’ where possible.
- Avoid starting sentences with ‘as’ or ‘ing’ words
~Thanks to Tahlia Newland for the cool new tweak!~
Whee Doggies is it taking a long time! The end of the school year rush makes for slow work, but at least I don’t lose my place! (When I’ve changed the word, it doesn’t show up in the find anymore so I know right where I left off!)
In case your clicking finger is broken and you didn’t go to The “Ly” check, I use Word’s “Find” tool and input each word, combing through the entire manuscript for the offenders. I found with these teeny words it helps a lot to type a space before and after the word in the “find” box. That weeds out the combination of letters in other words such as “this“, “came”, and others.
Kate Policani 