Writing FAST - Jeff Bollow 2012

Vague, cliché, unnecessary
Quicken and polish
Tweak

As you’re sifting through your sentences, it’s the perfect time to weed out anything that’s vague, cliché or unnecessary.

Vague sentences are bland and general, and have no direct meaning or point. They’re filler. They don’t say much, or they aren’t specific. Every sentence should be there for a reason!

Clichés are sentences that have been done to death. They’re not always bad — sometimes it’s a quick, direct way to convey an idea. But the whole problem with a cliché is that we’ve heard it before! Use them too often, and you’ll bore your reader.

Unnecessary sentences add nothing to your work. You’ve either said it already, or you don’t need to.

When you write with lightning speed using Talktation, you’ll write every kind of problem sentence. But you aren’t thinking! So it’s a good thing to do!

But now it’s time to reach your hands in there and yank them out. They served their purpose. They helped you get your project written. But reading them will put your reader to sleep. So they’ve gotta go.

The best way to fix them is to either combine sentences, trim sentences in half, separate sentences, or just delete them entirely.

I also like to test every sentence against the “one idea rule.” If you’ve got more than one idea in a sentence, it’s too long.

That’ll kill run-on sentences that go on forever and ever.

Make every sentence add something new to picture.