We all have words we love too much.

Maybe for you it’s something fancy, like “effulgent” or “apodictic,” or something sillier, like “smellypants.” And because we love these words, we will use them too often, until our readers begin to snicker quietly at us.

But those big, obvious words are easy to spot. We’ll whack them in the second draft. And even if we fail to do so, our friends will probably slap us the fiftieth time they encounter the word “prognosticate.”

It’s the little overused words that kill us, that quietly undermine our text without us ever noticing.

My big overused word was once “just,” as an adverb. “He was just happy to see you.” “She was just standing there.” It cropped up everywhere. After this was pointed out to me by a wise editor, I went through an entire novel, deleting it everywhere it didn’t completely change the meaning of the sentence. That cured me.

But how could I be sure that there weren’t other overused words mucking up my manuscript?

Then I discovered the word cloud.

“Word clouds” are graphic representation of the words in a text, scaled by how many times each word occurs. You’ve probably seen then in blog sidebars and Amazon listings. They’re software-generated, and therefore reveal common words that humans might overlook. (Though the software ignores super-common words like “the” and “a” automatically.) They’re also a great place to start when you begin work on your second draft.

This is what the word cloud for my latest novel, Leviathan, looked like after my first draft:

generated by the excellent Wordle.net software

As you can see, my two main character names, Alek and Deryn, are the biggest words by far.

Now, you can use word clouds to check relative importance of character names in your text, but I’m not interested in that here. (Alek is a bit bigger, but only because Deryn often goes by other names, like “Dylan” or “Mr. Sharp.” So no surprises there.) So let’s check for any overused little words.

The first thing that seems to be dominating is “eyes.” That may mean I’m relying too much on eyes for emotional cues, which could get boring. I definitely checked that as I worked on the second draft.

“Looked” is also a bit big, and got some scrutiny, I’m sure. If your characters are spending a lot of time looking at things, you probably got lazy at some point.

I also would have taken a search-pass on the word “voice,” which is often used as a shortcut to convey emotion. Too many phrases like “said Scott in a strained voice” is not a good sign.

“Feet,” “head,” and “hands,” are all big, but they’re all equal, so that doesn’t bother me as much. It’s a very physical book, after all, with lots of jumping and grabbing, and whacking of heads.

Note that I’m also ignoring interesting words, like “engines,” “walker,” and “hydrogen.” Those are just part of the world I’m writing about—airships and walking machines. I’d be worried if some cool words like that didn’t show up big.

See how it works? One glance at a word cloud can make all the difference.

To create your own word cloud, just copy and paste your entire text into this text field here at Wordle.net. Enjoy!

That’s it for today. Don’t forget to check out Justine’s Nano Tips on the last two remaining even-numbered days. See you on the 29th with my final entry!

This is my ante-penultimate Nano Tip, so you must be nearing the end of your fantabulous NaNoWriMo novel. Soon you’ll need to read the whole thing over with an editorial eye, polishing every sentence for sparkling clarity.

But how to concentrate on mere clauses and word choice while your amazing story is sweeping you along in its wake? How can you focus on all those pesky details when your characters are bleeding heroically onto the page?

Three words: Read it backwards.

Reading through a novel in reverse order is an old trick used by many writers. It’s like when an optometrist covers up one of your eyes to test the other. You’re covering up your “story eye” to bring grammar, spelling, and sentence structure into focus.

So what do I mean by “reading backwards”? Do you literally read the last word of your novel, then the one before that, then the one before that until you get to the beginning?

Well, that depends on what you want to concentrate on. Reading in reverse word order would bring spelling errors into sharp relief, but would probably also break your brain. No one I know does that.

A more feasible strategy is reading in reverse paragraph order. That serves to isolate sentences and word choices, without the drama of the scene pulling you past mistakes. On the other hand, if you read in reverse chapter order, you’ll be focused on the structure of individual scenes.

See how it works? The larger the unit you use for your reverse reading, the more “pulled back” you are from each level of writerly technique. But it’s up to you to discover which kinds of reverse reading are helpful for you.

Another reading-out-of-order technique I’ve used is to look at all the scenes in which a certain character appears, just to make sure they stay consistent.

Warning: if you start to get a headache, stop for a while before continuing. But don’t worry. It’s just like your first non-flipped manga; your brain will adapt eventually. That’s what it’s good at.

That’s it for today! Don’t forget to check out Justine’s Nano Tips on the even-numbered days of November. See you on the 27th.

So . . . you’re more than two-thirds done with NaNoWriMo, and maybe you’re starting to crumple a bit. Your dialog sounds forced, your action scenes are flat, and your plot twists have all turned to spaghetti. What can you do to break out of this slump?

Here’s my tip for the day: change your brain!

“Um, what now?” you may ask. Allow me to explain . . .

This tip was inspired by a recent article in the journal Brain and Cognition, about how traffic levels between the two hemispheres of your brain affects thinking. Researchers found that any activity that promoted neural cross-talk in test subjects also promoted creativity.

In other words, if you can get the two halves of your brain talking, you’ll be more likely to find inspiration. And it’s easier than you think.

(A quick note before I go on: most of the right-brain, left-brain stuff people repeat is total rubbish. There isn’t a “creative lobe” on one side of your head and an “analytical lobe” on the other. Both sides of your brain perform both analytic and creative tasks. The key here is to make them talk to each other.)

In this study, the subjects moved their eyes back and forth along a horizontal axis, like when you’re watching a tennis match. (Or a really boring game of Pong.) After thirty seconds of eye exercise, the subjects gained about ten minutes’ worth of improved scores on various creativity tests.

So if you need a quick hit of creativity, try looking from right to left for thirty seconds and see what happens.

Of course, you can’t move your eyes back and forth every ten minutes of your writing day. That would be dizzying and tedious. So how do you keep your creativity levels high for, say, all of November?

Luckily, there’s evidence that you can improve cross-talk levels (and thus creativity) on a permanent basis, simply by pretending that you’re left handed.

Here’s the thing: left-handed and ambidextrous subjects had no benefit from the eye movements in this study. In fact, in some studies lefties and ambies seem to get stupider after cross-talk exercises. Many scientists think that’s because lefties and ambies already operate at an optimal level of cross-talk, generated by the fact that the world is designed for right-handed people.

That’s right, all those rightie-baised scissors make lefties more creative.

Or to say it another way, being challenged by the world wires your brain for creativity!

So here’s my exercise for you today: Pretend you’re left handed. Open doors, eat, and mouse with your left hand for a day or so. You’ll be promoting cross-talk in your brain, and rewiring yourself for creativity. It may feel weird, but it should give your creative juices a boost.

And for those of you who are already left-handed or ambidextrous? Hey, you don’t need my help. You’re already creative geniuses! (Or rather, you’re already operating at optimal cross-talk levels, so you’ll have to find some other trick to make yourself smarter. Sorry!)

That’s it for today! Don’t forget to check out Justine’s posts on the even-numbered days of November. See you on the 25th.

Being a writer should change your daily life. You should scan the newspaper for story ideas, deconstruct old fairy tales in the shower, and eavesdrop shamelessly in the name of dialog development.

And being a writer should also change the way you read.

The next time you read a scene that makes your socks roll up, make yourself stop and learn.

Even if it interrupts your readerly pleasure, take a moment to wonder. How did the author just make you cry? Which elegant phrase or shameless trick jerked those tears from you? At what point in that action scene did your heart start pounding? What was the exact moment that you went from hating this character to liking them?

One of your jobs as a writer is to take novels apart and see how they work. Don’t go for the easy enjoyment of letting the words wash over you. Instead analyze and nitpick. Get your hands dirty.

Writers re-read.

Okay, I’m off to NCTE in Philly, so that’s it for today! Many amazing writers and I will be doing a benefit for the Philadelphia Free Library summer reading program while we’re there. Please come and support your local library!

Sunday, November 22 1:00-3:00PM
A NOVEL IDEA:
Laurie Halse Anderson, Jay Asher,
T.A. Barron, Sarah Dessen,
Steven Kluger, Justine Larbalestier,
David Levithan, Lauren Myracle,
Jacqueline Woodson and me!
Children’s Book World
17 Haverford Station Rd.
Haverford, PA

Don’t forget to check out Justine’s Nano Tips. See you in two days!

If you ever take a linguistics class, you will hear this catechism from the first day on:

1) Speech is primary.

2) Speech is universal among human cultures, and separates us from other animals.

3) Speech is innately acquired-–-unlike writing, which is a skill that must be learned.

4) Therefore speech (not writing) is the primary material for linguistic study.

Yes, dear NaNoWriMor-ers, writing is important. But speech is the bee’s knees. So when you want to measure your burgeoning novel against a basic human yardstick, read that sucker out loud.

Every week or so, Justine and I read aloud to each other the last few chapters of whatever books we’re writing. We like to entertain each other, but we do have one important rule: the reader is allowed to stop at any time to fix a lousy sentence, even if it leaves the listener hanging.

We’ve found this practice extremely useful for the following reasons:

1) When you read aloud, pacing issues become readily apparent.

2) It is physically impossible to read a crappy sentence without flinching.

3) Reading dialog aloud prevents unintentional hilarity.

3) Drafts are easier to share when no one can see your crappy punctuation and spelling. (In early drafts, you often don’t care about such details yet.)

5) Non-verbal responses like laughter and gasps are invaluable.

6) Novel writing is a lonely process with extremely long lag-times for feedback. Storytelling has the advantage of instantaneous feedback.

7) Loving to tell stories is why we got into this racket.

So the next time you’re stuck, consider finding a friend and reading aloud to them. Surprisingly, a stuffed animal works almost as well, because it’s not the listening that changes everything, it’s the talking.

Speech is primary.

You can still read my chat with Naomi Novik here at Suvudu.com. Don’t forget to check out Justine’s post from yesterday, about avoiding stereotypes, and her new one tomorrow. See you in two days!