Weekly Writers Challenge – 3/7/16

Redundant expressions can make a story cliche and weak. There are many possible reasons why a writer might inadvertently use a redundant expression; not understanding the meaning of the words, attempting to write as you speak, or even an attempt to be colorful.

An example would be: The space hero was in close proximity to the alien for too long.

Close and proximity are synonyms, and used together make a redundant expression.

This week’s challenge is to create a list of redundant expressions to avoid using in writing.

My list:

multiple others

leave from

unexpected surprise

join together

continue on

raise up

drop down

enter in

evolve over time

emergency situation

could possibly

fall down

actual experience (actually, using actual is actually pretty bad)

first of all

grow in size

hurry up

join together

merge together

new beginning

hopeful optimism

outside of

over exaggerate

past history

(a big pet peeve of mine: pizza pie)

plan in advance

reason is because

rise up

sum total (uhg! you can thank Microsoft for this one)

very unique (actually, almost anything with the word very is going to go very wrong)

write down

two twins

final outcome

coming after

few in number

still remains

Looks like you have most of them covered. I'm not so sure about "final outcome". As in..."We won't know the final out come until all the votes are counted."

ldgilman posted at 9:51PM Mon, 07 March 2016 - #4259816

Looks like you have most of them covered. I'm not so sure about "final outcome". As in..."We won't know the final out come until all the votes are counted."

There are countless hundreds of combinations that make redundant expressions. And, let me do a re-write of the above sentence so you can see.

Looks like you have most of them covered. Though, I'm not so sure of the outcome.

or

Looks like you have most of them covered. We won't know until the final ballets are counted.

The test for a redundant phrase is to remove either word, if the sentence still stands, you likely have a redundant expression.

HMMM, food for thought

ldgilman posted at 10:27PM Mon, 07 March 2016 - #4259819

HMMM, food for thought

I'm glad you brought the point up. Redundant expressions can be difficult to spot.

Just.

Just anything.

It's as bad as very or really, and I'm with you on actually. And honestly.

Honestly, I'm just actually very tired of really redundant ...

shit ... what was I saying?

auntietk posted at 6:47PM Tue, 08 March 2016 - #4259992

Just.

Just anything.

It's as bad as very or really, and I'm with you on actually. And honestly.

Honestly, I'm just actually very tired of really redundant ...

shit ... what was I saying?

Editing a book, now that's redundant. Gah! Writing is so much more fun than editing.

lol! I don't mind editing at all, especially when it's something that's fun to read! What's boring, in a redundant sort of way, is editing a manual for a piece of audio gear and having the person who wrote the manual resent you so much for criticizing his work that he doesn't make 75% of the recommended changes and publishes a piece of technically correct but basically unreadable drek. sigh it's good to be retired.

auntietk posted at 11:03AM Thu, 10 March 2016 - #4260227

lol! I don't mind editing at all, especially when it's something that's fun to read! What's boring, in a redundant sort of way, is editing a manual for a piece of audio gear and having the person who wrote the manual resent you so much for criticizing his work that he doesn't make 75% of the recommended changes and publishes a piece of technically correct but basically unreadable drek. sigh it's good to be retired.

At one of the companies I worked for, in addition to doing most of the sculpting and machining and being the model making department, I got to write most of the instruction manuals for our own products (and even a few for clients)... I used to try and be as clear and precise as possible, but loved including stuff like "Step 1- Make sure you are fully clothed and seated in an upright position Step 2- Using your eyeballs, locate the red lever and without severing your index finger, rotate it counter clockwise until you hear a distinct click. If the lever snaps off, you have rotated it too far. A green light and lack of fire should indicate you have properly engaged the motor...." Not alway that sever, but fun stuff.

McGyver13 posted at 11:04AM Thu, 10 March 2016 - #4260246

auntietk posted at 11:03AM Thu, 10 March 2016 - #4260227

lol! I don't mind editing at all, especially when it's something that's fun to read! What's boring, in a redundant sort of way, is editing a manual for a piece of audio gear and having the person who wrote the manual resent you so much for criticizing his work that he doesn't make 75% of the recommended changes and publishes a piece of technically correct but basically unreadable drek. sigh it's good to be retired.

At one of the companies I worked for, in addition to doing most of the sculpting and machining and being the model making department, I got to write most of the instruction manuals for our own products (and even a few for clients)... I used to try and be as clear and precise as possible, but loved including stuff like "Step 1- Make sure you are fully clothed and seated in an upright position Step 2- Using your eyeballs, locate the red lever and without severing your index finger, rotate it counter clockwise until you hear a distinct click. If the lever snaps off, you have rotated it too far. A green light and lack of fire should indicate you have properly engaged the motor...." Not alway that sever, but fun stuff.

Ah ha!!! It's your fault my refrigerator leans to the side when the microwave comes on.