When I say I wondered what the purpose was, it wasn’t that I didn’t understand the concept. It’s something that helps you avoid over-use of the same word in your writing. OK, great. I couldn’t possibly need such a thing, I have an excellent vocabulary base! So I thought.

Having spent time editing the works of other writers while I worked on completing my own manuscripts, I’ve developed a bit of an eye for the repetitive. As a reader, it got very boring very fast (wait for it, when you get to the quote you’ll see what I did there) to read the same words over and over again. I realized that in order to keep you the reader enthralled, I need to up the vocab ante. I became very appreciative of the words of that great scribe, Mark Twain:

I developed laundry lists of repetitive words and phrases for each author, demanding that these items be sought out and destroyed before they send me another manuscript. Surely, with such a keen awareness and discerning eye, my own writing would be practically perfect in the first draft, right?

Yeah…not so much. I read through my manuscript, quickly realizing that I had some of my own favorite phrases. So, grumbling, I started my own search-and-destroy list. The top offender in my mind would surely be any derivative of ‘to irritate’ since all of my characters seemed to be irritated all the time.

Want to know what the real problem words were? Here they are, for your viewing pleasure:

‘to reach’ used 42 times

‘to surprise’ used 24 times

Oh, and the one I thought would be the top item?

‘to irritate’ used 10 times

Moral of the story? We don’t know our catch phrases and comfort words nearly as well as we think we do, and there’s always room for improvement. So, dust of that old thesaurus, be mindful of your words, and keep adding to your personal vocabulary vault. As I went through to change these words in my work, I realized there’s something immensely satisfying about having options and knowing how to use them.