Be Your Own Editor

I came across a strange but simple online writing tool today called Cliche Finder, which will search your writing and highlight phrases it considers to be cliches. All you have to do is paste text into a box on a very minimalist web page. Its list of expressions to avoid could never be comprehensive, and the example on the site is culled from a political article, but most phrases listed are (too) common in both fiction and nonfiction. Some of the tool’s “cliches” are actually redundancies, such as “pragmatic realist” and “mutual cooperation.” But of course, you should avoid those like the plague, too (”avoid like the plague” being a cliche used here only for purposes of irony). In short, it’s a fast and easy way to highlight no-no phrases in any form of writing. And that’s not the only nifty writing tool I found.

There’s also a link on the site to this site, which offers a program called The Passivator, designed to flag both passive verbs and adverbs in your writing. It looks for the letters “ly,” along with certain words commonly found in passive constructions of verbs. This one rates a little lower on the easy-to-use scale for writers, since the words it highlights include most forms of the verb “to be,” meaning it’ll flag many active verb constructions in addition to passive. Might be easier just to scan your writing for passive verbs yourself. Also, it works only on web pages, so you’ll have to transfer your writing into some web-based form if it isn’t already. That’s easy enough these days, with the existence of such free web-based word processors as Google Docs, although I had to click “Preview” before the Passivator would scan my document.

A button can easily be dragged to your browser’s toolbar to install the Passivator writing tool. Perhaps too much trouble, but if passive verbs or adverb overload is a problem in your writing, consider trying it. I did… with the following long paragraph from a short story by John Updike called “The Walk with Elizanne”:

Her face had not exactly come closer to his, but its not turning and moving away made it feel closer. Cautiously he bent his face into hers, a little sideways, and kissed her. Elizanne’s lips took the fit snugly, warmly; she pressed slightly into the kiss, from underneath, looking for something in it. David felt caught up in a stream flowing counter to the current of everyday events, and began to run out of breath. He broke the contact and backed off. They stared at each other, her black eyes button-bright in the sodium streetlight, amid the restless faint shadows of the half-brown big sycamore leaves. Then he kissed her again, entering that warm still point around which the universe wheeled, with its load of stars not yet visible, the sky still blue above the streetlights. This time she backed off. A car went by, maybe containing somebody they knew, a spy or gossip. “And there was even more,” she said, giggling to show that she was poking fun at herself now, “that I wanted to say.”

What came up in Cliche Finder? Nothing. And it’s not only because their list isn’t comprehensive. I don’t see one cliche in Updike’s paragraph, a fairly awesome achievement when writing a romantic scene.

As for The Passivator, it found four “ly” adverbs and exactly two occurences of “was,” none of which I would change if editing the paragraph. I rather like the subtle rhythm of “took the fit snugly, warmly; she pressed slightly…” And both passive uses of “was” have a definite purpose—their effect would change and be lessened if made active. Use a tool like this not to blindly eliminate all adverbs or passive verbs from your writing, but to examine them more closely to make sure they’re the right choice.

I can hear some of you thinking that such writing tools make things “too easy,” or that you’re too good or experienced a writer to need them. But even the most brilliant of novelists slips into the occasional cliche or uses a passive verb when an active verb would be stronger. My advice is to experiment: try Cliche Finder once or twice. If a lot of phrases come up highlighted, that might alert you to a cliche overload in your writing you didn’t know existed. Or the experience might simply remind you to watch for such phrases yourself as your writing proceeds.

If anyone tries these tools out and has comments or interesting results to report, please share them below!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 18th, 2007 at 12:20 am and is filed under Web & Tech, Writing/Editing Tips: Nuts and Bolts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.