: Re: Is it a bad habit to write "something" too much? If so, how to get rid of it? I just realized my prose is filled with somethings. Here are some examples: I was already too far away

@Lee1909368

Yes, such generic placeholders are definitely washing out the image. The reader reads descriptions to gain knowledge of given situation, and these are empty, useless duds.

If the information is limited, give the scraps that are still available. A surprising sight made me stop again. Two hands shoved me, or a mass against my back shoved me.

Only use something when the data is insufficient to provide any meaningful info. "Something's rattling inside the box." There's very little to be said about whatever's rattling, so "something" is justified here.

Same goes for "A kind of" or "Some sort of." There's hardly a worse way to describe an object than as "some sort of object", especially if it's generic and exists in thousands variations. "We arrived at some sort of castle" is the laziest way of getting out of describing the castle while still technically describing it.

Now, for curbing that... well, Ctrl+F is your friend. Just find all occurrences and think of improving them. After several dozens corrected, you'll start catching yourself when you write that.

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: Re: Is it a bad habit to write "something" too much? If so, how to get rid of it? I just realized my prose is filled with somethings. Here are some examples: I was already too far away

More posts by @Lee1909368

: How can I learn the name of a colour to use in a description? I am trying to describe this character: Source Her attire is pretty easy to describe, Purple and Gold (while it looks yellow

: The president, the nickel and the dime Not sure if this is on topic here: I remember back when I was a kid, I read a story about a US president. When he was a kid, he was stupid and

: How to indicate the topic has been changed without using words? I am writing an an article to share knowledge, not novel. Usually, when you change the current topic, at the beginning of the

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