6 Editing Tips for Tightening Your Writing

• Use active voice
Verbs give sentences and books vibrancy. When too many of them in a story are passive or weak, the writing sounds drab.

• Cut begin fallacy
One way to tighten your writing is to eliminate the begin fallacy. This occurs when the writer introduces an action to the reader by saying “began to,” as in “My nerves began to calm.”

• Fat writing
Fat writing, a term coined by CSFW’s Sarah Smith, is “unnecessary and grandiose verbiage.” You may have heard writing instructors refer to it as “verdant greenery” or “purple prose.”

• Delete redundancies
A redundancy exists when the modifying words aren’t needed because they say exactly what the word being modified implies. For example, “rich heiress” is redundant as an heiress by definition is rich.

• Avoid pushbutton words
Sometimes rather than finding a truly evocative term, writers get lazy and use pushbutton words. Pushbutton words attempt to evoke an emotional response from readers without appealing to their critical faculties or intellect.

• Dump fuzzy words 
Fuzzy words weaken your writing by giving an inexact, out-of-focus picture of the landscape or idea that you’re portraying. Examples of fuzzy words include almost, half- , very, really, seem, looked like, and felt.