Ferreting out weasel words is a key editing technique. What are weasel words? The authors of Go Teen Writers: Edit Your Novel describe them as the unnecessary words that creep into your manuscript. They’re also called weed words. Every writer has pet ones that scurry through their stories until it’s time to edit.
Don’t worry about weasel words in the first draft. My first drafts are littered with “just” and “almost”. If I stopped to analyze whether each one is needed, I switch from the artist mindset to the editor one and break my creative flow. When I settle down to a thorough edit, that’s when I tackle the weasel words.
In my first novel, A Shadow on the Snow, I had characters thanking each other so much that a little ingratitude would have been welcome while I was editing. I only needed my characters to extended a few “thank you’s” to get across that they were polite, nice people.
While working on my third novel, I had a scene where three characters kept asking each other if they were “all right”. Good grief, I hadn’t remembered that “good” and “okay” work too, and those are the boring alternatives.
I also think you can have weasel settings. These are settings that a writer uses too much. A Shadow on the Snow had too many scenes set in places where characters were eating or in cars while characters were driving. I had to broaden my scope of settings.
If you’re a writer, what weasel words do you have to ferret out? Do you have settings that are your go-to? What are they?