Your fetish words

[David I]

Over in the thread on "up and "down", folks have been listing the words they overuse (up, down, over, then, that, very, quite, and many of the other usual suspects have been listed).

Think of this as the obverse side of that question--what unusual or obscure word do you tend to overuse? For example, my editor congratulated me on using the verb (not the adjective) "gentle"--as in taking steps to calm a horse.

He congratulated me on it, but then suggested that more than once in a single novel was too much (I'd used it four times in 500 pages, and, yes, it was too much).

I also have an inordinate fondness for "eased" as a verb ("He eased his way around the corner...") though I haven't been called on that one yet. It's such a sneaky, relaxed verb that it doesn't shout and call attention to itself.

And I like the adjective "coruscating" because it has so damn much texture. So I've used it twice, in two different books, in passages sufficiently over-the-top that I don't think it was noticeable. But even one "coruscating" is a lot.

So, what's your kink? Furfuraceous? Thews? Coddled? Minced? Striations? HUnkered? What less-common words tned to creep into your manuscript?

[KTC]

damn. you said hunkered. I overuse that one in my poetry.

in fiction, i like all my trees to be sycamores. I love the word. i edit when i'm done...chop down some sycamores and plant some pines or maples...

[dolores haze]

I have to bitchslap meself every time I use the word "gazed." (Ouch!) It gets a bit painful after a few thousand words in romanceland, where people spend lots of time gazing (Owee!) at each other besottedly.

[Paula Boon]

I once used the words 'oblique' and 'obliquely' three times in 200 pages - definitely at least two times too many.

[Shady Lane]

I used "leaned" all the time...not quite obscure, but still. I want my characters to stand up straight sometimes. Damn slouchy teenagers.

[Ziljon]

Prodigious.

[Devil Ledbetter]

I found a profusion of stumbled, popped and crouched.

Oh, and stung.

[melaniehoo]

Right now I have a lot of federalies. They aren't exactly policemen so I'm not sure what else to call them. Soldiers, officers, armed-men...

ETA: OT I use eager a lot. Tried plethora today and it doesn't fit with my voice.

[Lizbeth0925FL]

I find that my characters are "annoyed" or "amused" way too much.

[kristie911]

Definitely. I use definitely way too much. Also actually.

Actually, I definitely overuse them both... :D

[spacejock2]

glanced, suddenly, immediately, turned to see, "It was ", "There were ", realised, x saw, x heard.

Just got a manuscript back from a first reader who pointed them all out ;-) Suddenly I realised (since it was immediately obvious at a glance) that I was overusing certain words.

[wood pixie]

Grinned. My characters like to grin quite a bit.

[Judg]

I'm afraid to find out. I suspect a lot of grins and nods are going to be axed, but there could be others I'm missing.

I remember reading Guy Gavriel Kay's first trilogy, where he had a passionate love affair with all forms of the word diffident going on. He used gentle as a verb twice, both time with boats. Once was enough, because it was so unusual, it really grabbed your attention.

Those books really needed a better editor, because there were a lot of little tics going on, but the raw talent still kept me reading.

WordPerfect used to have a function that would list words by frequency. Unfortunately, that one vanished in later versions. A real pity, because I used it to catch the words that were getting overworked.

[TurkeyLurkey]

My characters turn and look a lot.

Something else for me to worry about while editing. *sigh*

[triceretops]

stood
waggled
looked askance
furrowed his brows
cocked an eyebrow
chewed her lips
rubbed his temples
licked his lips
frowned
laughed
definitely
actually
yet
rather
almost

My characters can stand in a room and burn all kinds of calories.

Tri

[leenakincaid]

stood

My characters can stand in a room and burn all kinds of calories.

Tri

I laughed uproariously at that and woke up my roommate. She, fortunately, insisted on knowing what was so funny and burst out laughing at that line.

Really
Almost
Also

and all sorts of flowery phrases. But it fits with the character now. She's fifteen and having a relationship with her teacher.

[Stormhawk]

I don't feel right unless I use the word "nonetheless" at least once during a story.

[imagoodgurl4]

I used "smile" too much. And "gazed." And I also have a tendency to use "had" a lot, but I've gotten better with that one and only use it when absolutely necessary.

[ErylRavenwell]

I'll never be caught dead using a word like "furfuraceous". Neither would I bother looking the definition of it in the dictionary. That's a word a writer can very well do without.

Mine would be "lay" (past tense of lie) and "laid"—and "regard", yes; as in "She lifted her eyes to meet his regard." I'm also fond of words like "ambrosia" and "minutiae".

[Zelenka]

Mine are things like 'looked', 'gazed', 'stared', 'glanced' etc. Usually the first thing I do when I edit is stop my characters just staring at one another.

I also tend to use 'pewter' far too often when describing clouds or water.

[ErylRavenwell]

damn. you said hunkered. I overuse that one in my poetry.

in fiction, i like all my trees to be sycamores. I love the word. i edit when i'm done...chop down some sycamores and plant some pines or maples...

At least that's very original. Everyone else's tree is the oak or the pine. You mind if I steal your tree? :D

[Saundra Julian]

Mine laugh a LOT...well, they're happy people. :D

I've noticed they look over their shoulder a lot too...I seem to really like that one!

[KTC]

At least that's very original. Everyone else's tree is the oak or the pine. You mind if I steal your tree? :D

let me chop one out of my current wip...i'm sure there's sycamores to spare in it.

[imagoodgurl4]

Mine are things like 'looked', 'gazed', 'stared', 'glanced' etc. Usually the first thing I do when I edit is stop my characters just staring at one another.

I also tend to use 'pewter' far too often when describing clouds or water.

All my characters do that, too. Your characters and my characters should get together for a staring contest. :)

And I never thought of describing clouds or water with the word pewter. I love that. Mind if I steal your word?

[Zelenka]

All my characters do that, too. Your characters and my characters should get together for a staring contest. :)

And I never thought of describing clouds or water with the word pewter. I love that. Mind if I steal your word?

Not at all.:)

[Saanen]

I went over a manuscript recently and realized I'd used the phrase "good heavens!" about 10,000 times--all my characters were saying it constantly. I think I took almost all of them out.

Pewter water and sky--God, JessR., that's such a perfect descriptive word! And I love sycamores too, KTC, but I don't know if I've ever actually put one in a story. Now I see I'm going to have to write something set near a lake surrounded by sycamores.

[Zelenka]

I'm trying to think if I've ever had a sycamore in a story. I think mine are always either yew or silver birch. I'll need to put a few sycamores in now too.

[jodiodi]

I catch myself writing: In truth, yada yada ... a lot. My characters also doa lot of smiling, nodding and gazing or have a gaze. It's hard in the nominal romance genre to avoid gazes since, as another poster said, people in romances tend to gaze a lot at one another. I use it because saying, "Their eyes met" makes me think of a couple of pairs of eyeballs floating in mid-air in the center of a room.

My trees are usually oaks and pines because most of my real-world books are set in the south, Georgia to be specific, and there are lots of oaks and pines down there. Dripping with Spanish Moss.

[Wraith]

in fiction, i like all my trees to be sycamores. I love the word. i edit when i'm done...chop down some sycamores and plant some pines or maples...
Haha, that's funny. Whenever I use trees I have to make sure I know what they look like (I'm terrible at identifying trees), so I end up always having birch-trees somewhere around. The white kind. It makes description easier.

My words...hmm, I tend to use serpent a lot. And if not, snake. Lizard, even. Yeah, I'm gonna have to clean up a lot of crawlers when I edit :rolleyes:

One of my characters always smiles and is always 'ironical'. Also I tend to use 'dark' a lot when it's not needed. But I like to tighten up description in rewrites and to vary my imagery. I once discovered that twice in my wip, at a couple of chapters distance, a character was laying down on the ground looking at the trees converging in the sky. I'm pretty sure those were the only instances of 'converge' in the book. :D

My characters also say 'Of course' a lot. I'm not sure why. Maybe they're trying to hide how bad my dialogue really is :D.

[spacejock2]

Mine are things like 'looked', 'gazed', 'stared', 'glanced' etc. Usually the first thing I do when I edit is stop my characters just staring at one another.

I also tend to use 'pewter' far too often when describing clouds or water.

Better than using 'pewter' when describing characters starting at one another ...

[WittyandorIronic]

My MC "encourages" her paramour a lot...but as she is a lusty wench, I expected it.
I talk about my characters eyes WAY too much, and I think I use the phrase "black gaze", or glare, or stare, at least three times per sentence. All my skies are leaden or steel....I am totally 'steeling' pewter in the rewrite.

Off topic - OMG! Simon Haynes. LoL. I just plugged your fan-freaking-tastic software in another post about outlines and tools. I also use the Freemind you suggested...sweet. Just wanted to say that your software rocks.

[RedScylla]

My characters are always way too surprised in the first draft. In the second draft they're surprised and shocked. Typically that gets solved by the third draft. Also, I love the word "warren" as in a "warren of rooms."

[David McAfee]

belied. As in "The look on her face belied her enthusiasm."

I once found four of those in 300 pages. Two examples were a mere 5 pages apart.

[J. R. Tomlin]

glanced, suddenly, immediately, turned to see, "It was ", "There were ", realised, x saw, x heard.

Just got a manuscript back from a first reader who pointed them all out ;-) Suddenly I realised (since it was immediately obvious at a glance) that I was overusing certain words.
I do a universal search for "It was" and "There was" when I edit. Horrible. I just wish I could learn to not use them in the first place. :)

[qdsb]

My characters turn red a lot. Their faces (or some portion of their heads...ears, tip of the nose, neck) flush with anger, blush with embarassment, turn purple with exertion, etc.

As for the big words, I have a growing list of words I'd like to use in at least one wip:

wampum
nougat
arms akimbo
verisimilitude
protean
obsequious

Fortunately for me, the bigger ones from the list work within the context of my historical WIP, while nougat works in my urban YA wip.

[Justin91]

Cornucopia…I don’t know why!

[Devil Ledbetter]

arms akimbo
My mother has this flagged as a book-wall-syndrome term. She brings up her disgust with it every time we discuss novels. :D

[JohnDavidPaxton]

Simply. I say it all the time. I say it as a dialog tag. I say it to describe a short action. I use it to turn a lean, magical 3 word action sentence into a four word one that is somehow clunking about.

I don't know why. I can't stop. The only hope for me is editing out at someone else has seen it. For I, cursed as I am, have simply blindness. I am unaware of it. Even now I look to see if I have typed it. I am not certain.

[qdsb]

My mother has this flagged as a book-wall-syndrome term. She brings up her disgust with it every time we discuss novels. :D

LOL! I know, I know. I've seen "arms akimbo" used in novels a lot too...but the thing is, I stand that way A LOT. :) And I know several people who stand that way...sometimes for no real reason. And I just like the sound of it...maybe I'll just tuck it quietly in the urban YA wip...just once. :idea:

[rwam]

"Nodded"

[David I]

I don't feel right unless I use the word "nonetheless" at least once during a story.

"Once is philosophy; twice is perversion."

--Voltaire, declining to go to a bordello catering to "special tastes" for a second visit.

[JoniBGoode]

The working class characters in my novel can't seem to talk or even think without swearing. It's getting frickin' annoying. I keep meaning to speak to them about it, but I'm afraid they'll beat me up.

[LilliCray]

in fiction, i like all my trees to be sycamores. I love the word. i edit when i'm done...chop down some sycamores and plant some pines or maples...


How amazingly ironic! I just finished writing a piece about a string of caves stuck under the roots of a dead sycamore tree! Might have changed it by now, for no real reason... sometimes my brain confuses sycamores with... I'unno... "gaddlefliffleplat."

Gaze. Look. Lean. Turn. All those wonderful words. Groaneth... I need a wider body language vocabulary. My long dialogue pieces end up either redundant or talkie headie thingies.