words to avoid in a manuscript you want to sell

Spent some time at a weekend retreat with authors (both published and unpublished).  There were great workshops.  I wanted to share two tips I gathered from Tara Janzen and her talk on the "Writer's Tool Kit."

1. There are words that should not be used in your work.  They are "lazy words" and contribute to weak writing.  Examples include: should, would, could, is, was, were, are, it, that.  (The one that needs purging the most?  That.)
   
2. The phrase that should not be used unless there is absolutely no other way in the English language to say what you mean: "the fact that."

So I thought it might be interesting to see how many times I've used these weasel words in my first draft (currently under revision).  Thanks to find/replace, I can get a count.  Check it out:

should (105)
could (300)
would (368)
is (229)
was (994 ...now I'm getting depressed)
were (272)
are (167)
it (595)
that (839...really depressed)
the fact that  (7)

As you can see, weak words are easy words and we use them a lot.  Now that I know to keep an eye on them, I can make my writing stronger before sending my manuscript out into the world.

Happy revising!