Craft: The Magic Keys to Tight Prose « Flash Fiction Chronicles

Craft: The Magic Keys to Tight Prose « Flash Fiction Chronicles
"When you tighten your prose, you want to eliminate a lot of the words commonly used in speech, but which can clutter up your writing.  “Just” is one of those words.  So are “still,”  “that,” “which,” “had,” “who,” “actually,” “really,” “quite,” and “perhaps.”  Other words to consider jettisoning are “was” and “is” in combination with a verb such as “run.”  Example, I was running is stronger when phrased as I ran…and uses fewer words ."
-by Gill Hoffs