Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Blog Chain: My Go-To Phrases And Scenes

So. I am super behind on my blog chain post, but alas! It is here!

*slaps wrist for tardiness*

Okay. Christine asks the following:

What are your "go-to" scenes or phrases? You know, the ones you have to remind yourself NOT to use too frequently? What do you do to keep yourself from being overly reliant on them?

Oh, Christine. Why must you embarrass me so? Some of my go-to words of choice depend on the manuscript's genre. For example, if the story is set in contemporary times, I'd stick with "whatever" and "just." EVERY character would end up saying one or both those words, and I'd write them outside of dialogue as well. You know. Because I'm smart like that. As for scenes, I love writing dialogue, so there's a lot of talking and reminiscing and not doing anything in all my first drafts. This is why I like to outline. I feel safer from the DIALOGUE TEMPTRESS that way. :)

With my current high fantasy WIP, the culprit has been "I stare at him(her), unblinking." My main character says this at least a billion times. It's... not pretty. This is less a plotting issue and more of a laziness issue. In the moment, it seems like I can't come up with any other way to describe shock or horror. But hey, that's what revisions are for! *hugs revisions tight*

Thanks so much to Christine for the awesome topic! Don't forget to check out what Cole and Margie had to say. :)


Do you have go-to phrases and scenes? If so, what are they? What do you do to stop them from taking over your manuscript?