We’re nearing the end of this series of my top ten peeves as an editor. Just one more after this. Unless something else jumps into my top ten, then I might add that later.
Today’s peeve—unnecessary actions—is another one that can become easy to spot. Easy after someone pointed it out to me years ago, and then easier after editing a few clients who really went overboard with this.
It’s the type of excess verbiage that sneaks into your writing. You may not notice it, but readers will. Even if readers don’t specifically think to themselves, “There are too many unnecessary actions here,” they will notice the flow of the story bogging down. And it often happens at a moment when you want increased pace, not decreased. The narration becomes so busy that the actions get lost in the crowd.
It’s another example of words that get in the way of the writing, which creates writing that gets in the way of the story.
A couple of quick exaggerations to illustrate:
I reac…
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