Writing Tips From a Master: Mark Twain.
“Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very.” Your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” Here, Twain offers some advice that can help writers young and old learn to express themselves more clearly. By eliminating unnecessary words, you’ll make your writing more precise and ultimately more effective, even if today we don’t find damn as objectionable as they did in Twain’s time.
MeyerLaneWrites shared these writing tips from Mark Twain, along with their own thoughts on his quotes. I am reblogging this just as much for me as I am for you, since the advice is priceless.
Just the very first tip was something I wish I had read before I started writing my novel. It would have saved me a lot of adverb deletion once I was through. I only hope my editor will still like me when she’s through deleting all the unnecessary words I still kept in because I couldn’t bear killing them….