Welcome to My Worlds: A Bipolar Christian Tells All

Hope y’all are havin’ a great evening. Here’s another nugget of wisdom for ya. I’m in the less-is-more crowd. Many writers fill their verbiage with superfluous words. We covered intensifiers yesterday. Today, it’s qualifiers. Ugh. 

Definition: An unnecessary word that blurs your meaning and weakens your sentence.  

Something is, or it isn’t. No reason to shroud your sentence in the fog, to sap the strength from the meaning of it (okay, so I’m being overly dramatic. Biiig surprise!). 

Here’s your example: It was a bit cold outside. Can anyone guess what the qualifier is? “A bit.” As previously stated, something is, or it isn’t. Is it cold, or not? If it is, go back to yesterday’s lesson, where we used the word “frigid.” It was frigid outside. If your character isn’t in

Antarctica, use a descriptive word that isn’t so strong. It was chilly outside. 

I know, I don’t allow sentences to begin with “it was,” but for the sake of the example, I let it pass. I juggle two businesses in the daytime, and start working on my handbag business at 8 p.m. Last night I went to bed at 3 a.m. and got up at 6:00. “It was” is lookin’ good right now. 

Other qualifying offenders are: rather, a little, a lot, seemed, only, slightly, just, almost, nearly, sort of, kind of, etc. (No, “etc.” isn’t a qualifier.) 

Remember, there are exceptions, especially in dialogue. Every character has a different speech pattern. Some of these words are also appropriate when one character speculates on what another character is thinking.  

Night night. Hope you join me on the morrow for your last mini-lesson. 

Smiles,Kelly 

This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 03:53 and is filed under Lessons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.