Tag Archives: gesture crutches

Coming July 7: Gesture Crutches Webinar

Do you want to make your characters unique and avoid empty repetition and clichés? Sign up for my Gesture Crutches webinar, coming up JULY 7 at 8 PM MDT/5 PM PDT. The presentation will be followed by a live chat Q&A. The cost is $10.

gesture crutchesSmiling, nodding, laughing, sighing, frowning–they’re all the little gestures we use every day to convey meaning, and they can creep into every page of our writing. These overused actions quickly become flat clichés, sapping your story’s power. Come learn how to find these common “gesture crutches,” discover new strategies to fix them, and use the smallest gestures to personalize your characters.

To sign up, visit my online courses page!

More resources on gesture crutches

gesture crutchesLast week, I gave a class at the LDStorymakers Conference on gesture crutches. You can find my presentation here, but today I’m sharing the resources I cited in class!

Books on the topic

Blog posts on gesture crutches

The bulk of my presentation came from my own blog posts, especially my series on gesture crutches: finding gesture crutches (the macro code), tracking & changing gesture crutches and strategies to fix the top 10 gesture crutches.

You can find John Gilstrap quoting his editor, Michaela Hamilton, here.

Other resources

Courses by Margie Lawson including Empowering Characters’ Emotions and Writing Body Language and Dialogue Cues opened my eyes to gesture crutches and started me on the path to take my writing to the next level!

Gesture crutches presentation

Saturday at the 2014 LDStorymakers Conference, I got to present on gesture crutches! So many wonderful friends turned out at 8 AM, or sat on the floor or even stood to listen to this presentation—thank you! IF YOU WERE IN THE CLASS AND DID NOT GET THE EMAIL SIGNUP SHEET TO RECEIVE CLASS FILES, PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW!

So, what are gesture crutches?

Smiling, nodding, laughing, sighing, frowning—they’re all the little gestures we use every day to convey meaning, and they can creep into every page of our writing. These overused actions quickly become flat clichés, sapping your story’s power. Come learn how to find these common “gesture crutches,” discover new strategies to fix them, and use the smallest gestures to personalize your characters.

How do we do this? Check out my presentation to learn more, and be sure to stay tuned for more resources tomorrow!

Fixing the Top 10 Gesture Crutches!

This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series Gesture crutches

We’ve looked at multiple ways to find your cliché gesture crutches . . . now what? How do we fix these little gestures that creep into our conversations and our manuscripts—eventually weighing down every single scene?

gesture crutchesWe use crutches when we’re lame. Gesture crutches? They’re often a symptom of writing that’s limping along. Don’t let your writing limp! Make it run, jump, dance and sing!

Here are my top ten gesture crutches that I either write or see too often, and how I fix them. Note that the top ten will vary from person to person. I do not eliminate these words completely from my manuscript, but I try to make sure that I don’t use them too often or too close together, and when I do use them, they should be as fresh and unique as the scene can handle.

How do I tackle all this?

First, in a paper edit, I use one of the techniques from Wednesday, writing down the body parts/action in the margin, then reading those notes aloud for pattern and repetition. I make notes and adjustments based on that.

Later, I use a macro to “harvest” all the sentences containing those terms from my WIP. Rather than using find thousands of times, I go through that new document and make a note of a few things in the document:

  • patterns (she smiled in joy, she smiled in gratitude, he frowned in disapproval, etc.)
  • echos (“my heart kick starts” and “my pulse jumpstarts,” especially fairly close together)
  • uses too close together
  • uses that don’t make sense (could be the lack of context, but I made a note to check)
  • uses that aren’t necessary
  • uses that are awkward
  • uses that could be fresher
  • uses that are “bare” and could just be filler action tags: i.e. Jimmy frowned. “What do you mean?”—punch up, freshen, replace or cut. (Gasp! You could use a dialogue tag!)

On my first pass, I’m only marking the things I want to look at, unless inspiration for a rewrite strikes. Then I go back through and make the changes in the manuscript.

Fixing those crutches!

As I go through each set of sentences, I look at those notes and strategize how to make my changes. Here are some of the alternatives I’ve thought about for the following 10 gestures. Note that a lot of these strategies can work for all body language cues, so there’s a bit of repetition between the lists.

Nods

Characters who nod too much are liable to have their heads fall off, or at least sound like bobbleheads.

  • Give a character (most likely just one) a unique, character-specific gesture—I used eyebrow-nods (it only happens 2-3 times).
  • Change to just “agrees.”
  • If the character is complying with a request, cut the nod altogether and just have them obey.
  • If they were just nodding at something/someone, consider using gesturing, pointing, indicating with eyes, jerking head, tapping, etc.
  • Convert some nods to dialogue: “Yes/yeah/sure.”
  • Cut anything unnecessary.
  • Punch up ones that remain, as much as you can in their context. A few examples of fresher nods to get your juices flowing:
    • a single, decisive dip of the chin
    • a yeah-sure-we’ll-see-about-that nod
    • “The receptionist smiled and nodded in that way people do when they aren’t listening.” —Harlan Coben, No Second Chance

And remember: you don’t ever have to say a character nods her head/up and down/yes. They are all redundant. What else do you nod? How else do you nod? What else does a nod mean after a yes/no question?

Head shake

Again, we’re in danger of losing someone’s head due to stripped out cervical vertibrae. Just don’t.

  • Convert to dialogue! From a flat-out “No” to a muttered “unbelievable,” dialogue can not only carry so much more impact than shaking one’s head, it can also make your meaning clearer without resorting to a pesky adverb.
  • Use another gesture to portray the meaning: a sigh (if you haven’t already overused those!), a tongue-cluck, a wagging finger, etc.
  • Use another verb for “shake”: wag, . . . . uhhhhh . . .
  • Cut.
  • If a lot of your head shakes are being used to convey the same message (other than no—maybe disbelief or disappointment), then take a little while to sit down and think about all the ways you can convey that nonverbally. Watch people, watch reality TV, watch well-acted movies, and see how those people look when they’re experiencing that emotion. Look for subtle and unique tells. Check out The Emotion Thesaurus, or this writers’ game, where you pick the body part first for more ideas.
  • Try “disagrees,” “demurs” or other d words. I mean verbs of disagreement.
  • If you have to have to have to keep it, punch it up! Maybe your character shakes his head like a dog getting out of the washtub, or like he’s afraid it’ll fall off, or like he’s wearing a neck brace.

Smiles

I swear, sometimes my characters sound like grinning idiots. Smile at this; smile at that. Save the smiles for when it counts, not just as a conversational smoother.

  • Try other words, like beams or grins—but these are easy to overuse, too! I try to check these one after another.
  • Give the character a particular type of smile. Maybe he smiles like a feral dog or a jack o’lantern, or a presidential candidate.
  • Use subtext or dialogue to convey approval, gratitude, or other messages.
  • Write it fresh! Give it a message, or use a simile to compare it to something (that isn’t a cliché). Some fresh smiles to get you thinking:
    • “‘They’re all in there waiting for you,’ she said, flashing an I’m-glad-I’m-not-you smile.”—Angela Hunt, The Note, via Margie Lawson.
    • From my WIP: “He orders two coffees with his I’m-so-charming-you-should-throw-in-something-for-free smile.”
    • My favorite smile in all literature (can we say amplified?): “He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Raised Eyebrows

One raised eyebrow. Two. Three. It doesn’t matter. The gesture can mean anything from surprise to disbelief to sarcasm. It’s too generic and overused to mean much of anything these days: a classic cliché.

  • Think about the underlying emotion and find other gestures that might convey it more clearly, especially since “he raised his eyebrows in confusion” becomes not only a cliché but also telling. Watch people, watch reality TV, watch well-acted movies, and see how those people look when they’re experiencing that emotion. Look for subtle and unique tells. Check out The Emotion Thesaurus, or this writers’ game, where you pick the body part first for more ideas.
  • Cut.
  • Use dialogue to convey the response or emotion.
  • Write it fresh! Use a unique verb, describe their movement in a unique way, or show the message you’re trying to send. A few of my quick, fresh eyebrows:
    • His eyebrows jumped to meet his receding hairline.
    • “Uh huh,” he said, his eyebrow propped up an inch.
    • She raised her eyebrow, nailing him with that patented mother-knows-better-than-you look.

An exception to the rule: most of the time, you don’t have to eradicate these words, but I think I’ll be eliminating the majority of my plain eyebrow raises.

Glance

It’s like my characters can’t look at anything for very long. Focus, people! You do not have ADH—squirrel!

  • Use another verb. Be careful not to overuse synonyms or use words so unusual that they call attention to themselves.
  • If it’s the POV character, just show what s/he saw and skip the filter word.
  • If the glance is less to see something and more to convey a particular message, spell out the message in a fresh or funny way.
  • Ooor use dialogue for that fresh, funny message.
  • Write it fresh!

Furrowed brow (or eyebrows drawing together)

In my latest manuscript, the only time I mentioned “brows” was when they were furrowed. Which makes mine furrowed, too.

  • Use a simile. Lots of things are wrinkly: pugs, my laundry, septuagenarians. Note: are stormclouds overused in this context?
  • It seems like this expression rarely occurs in isolation. Focus on another part of the face or the body language. As always, this is best with a gesture or body part that’s specific and unique to the character.
  • Watch either of these in the POV character. Both can sound like an external visual instead of the character describing his/her own conscious movements.
  • Write it fresh! Some fresh eyebrows & brows to get you rolling:
    • She looks like Our Lady of Perpetual Solemnity.
    • His eyebrows pull together in knit two, purl two ribbing. (Want to get uberjargony? Say “k2p2 rib.”)
    • The gray caterpillars above his eyes lean in for an intimate moment.

Eyes widen/narrow/light up

I make my characters’ expressions while writing. . . . I probably look like I have crazy eyes!

  • Find another body part or part of the expression to highlight. I’m searching for a good way to write the feeling of your scalp tightening when you’re surprised.
  • Use a simile. Can her eyes light up like a firework or narrow like a camera lens?
  • Go for dialogue instead. In Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Brad Pitt’s character tells Angelina Jolie’s that when he first saw her, she looked like Christmas morning. A kid’s eyes lighting up on Christmas morning would have been a cliché; instead the writers used a metaphor an narrowly avoided the tired phrase.
  • My favorite way to write it fresh: Find a character-specific situation to describe in a simile. What would make her eyes narrow? A lying ex? A too-good to be true sale? A delinquent teen? What makes his eyes light up? Hot girls? A challenging math puzzle? The latest FPS video game?

Laugh

I’ve written whole conversations where the characters just take turns laughing. But laughing is one of those things: if the character laughs, the reader doesn’t have to.

  • Is it really that funny? “LOL” really means “I found that amusing” these days. Don’t overuse laughing with your characters that way.
  • Is a response necessary? Sometimes you can cut the laugh altogether.
  • Use dialogue, and if you’re already using dialogue, drop the laughter.
  • Consider a synonym for laugh, but most chortles and guffaws draw attention to themselves.
  • Describe the laugh to make it pop. Write it fresh!:
    • A suuuure-you-can laugh.
    • Her laughter was bright and thin and , like the sound of cheap jingle bells you buy one year—and the next find inexplicably silent.

Sigh

Okay, I’m being sarcastic about the other gestures, but I really did once write a scene where a character decided not to sigh, thinking everyone else was doing enough moody exhaling for them all.

  • Especially watch for clichés like “a sigh of relief.” Write it fresher!
  • If they’re not absolutely necessary, delete!
  • Look at the underlying emotion. How else might it be manifest? Vocal tone? Shoulders, fists,
  • Look at another narrative mode. Would it be more powerful to describe the reason for the sigh in thought, or better yet, dialogue?
  • If you must use several sighs, you might consider finding a way to punch them up systematically. In Paranormalcy by Kiersten White, one of her characters is introduced early on as speaking a “professional sigher.”
  • Kiersten White goes further than that, describing those sighs with the message they send:
    • “This was more of a sympathetic, I know what it’s like to be a human wrapped up in all this non-sense, but if we didn’t do it, who would? kind of a sigh” (12).
    • “Raquel gave me her best why is it always me that has to deal with these things sigh (one I was well familiar with at this point), then patted me on the shoulder” (20).
    • “She gave a can I just start shocking him into submission now sort of sigh” (25).

Gaze/Eyes

Aside from the eyes widening, narrowing or lighting up, they tend to do a lot of other things to convey meaning. Although I would NEVER recommend cutting all the eyes (ouch!), watch out for using too many eyes in one scene. Even alternating them with gaze might not work if that’s overused, too.

  • Track the usage: are those gazes/eyes, meeting, avoiding, lowering, falling, etc. too much or in too close proximity?
  • Alternate gaze/eyes—within reason! Don’t describe a gaze with the color of the eyes, etc. (A blue gaze? No.)
  • Try an alternative noun, as long as they’re not overused, too (many of these are on my watch list!): stare, (fixed) look, scrutiny, inspection, regard.
  • Or, if it’s a verb, try an alternate verb (again, many of these are also on my watch list): stare, look (fixedly), gape, goggle, eye, study, scrutinize, ogle, eyeball, observe, view, contemplate, regard, survey, consider, watch, check out, size up.
  • Use a nickname for the eyes, or bring out a character description or personality with them. Perhaps a flirtatious character bats his baby blues.
  • Maybe being more general might help, using the word face or expression.
  • As always, look at the underlying message. How else can you portray that in body language? Hands touching/not touching/pulling away? Physical proximity? Turning toward or away?
  • Consider whether the message might carry more power as a thought or dialogue, if appropriate.

In conclusion

Is this hard work? YES! Is it worth it? We can—well, actually, we probably can’t cite examples of less-than-engaging writing in published books: unless they’re book-throwing bad, we tend to gloss over this boring body language just like we do a lot of other unstellar examples.

I can’t help but believe this level of care, attention and effort pays off in your writing.

Final note: Let me say again that I don’t feel compelled to change every use of everything. I left my share of nods, smiles, and eyebrows in my latest manuscript. If we didn’t use these body parts and actions, our writing probably wouldn’t feel realistic. But now I feel my writing is more engaging because I’ve eliminated the superfluous, meaningless, confusing and repetitive.

What do you think? How do you fix these gesture crutches? Is this worth it?

Photo credits
crutches on orange backgroundChristian Guthier; “smile”—Andy Hay;
crutches through window—Amy van der Hiel; sigh—Lucy/squacco

Writing crutches: How to avoid overusing the most common gestures!

This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series Gesture crutches

This is one of my favorite, most useful posts. Since we mentioned editing gesture crutches recently, I wanted to share it again!

I’ll admit it: I’m addicted to gesture crutches. I use them over and over again throughout a book or chapter or sometimes even scene. It’s like I can’t stop, especially when I’m drafting!

gesture crutchesWhat are gesture crutches, and why should we avoid them? As editor Michaela Hamilton said in an revision letter:

Don’t resort to overused gestures such as shrugged, nodded, sighed, shook his head. These are ok occasionally, but in general, seek more vivid gestures that tell more about a character, help set a mood, and create visual dimension in the scene.

Guilty as charged [author John Gilstrap writes]. My problem here is that the ones she notes are the only conversational gestures that I know of. I stipulate that I overuse them, but if anyone has other gesture arrows that I can add to the quiver, feel free to speak up.

I, too, am guilty as charged. It’s tough to come up with original gestures, and sometimes distracting to the reader. (Think we’re alone in struggling with this? Check out this thread on Nathan Bransford’s forums.) While critique partners and editors are pretty much a must-have for the ultimate solution, I’ve found a couple ways to check myself on gestures.

Using character-specific, unique gestures

A couple weeks ago, I finished Brandilyn Collins’s Getting Into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn From Actors. Her very first secret, “Personalizing,” describes the process of finding a unique gesture for a character. Her example is of a rich, insecure woman who dislikes her hands, but wants to show off her ring, a symbol of her wealth. Can’t you just imagine how a woman like that would hold her hands? (It’s a conflicted gesture!)

Writing simple gestures more creatively

my cousin and her friend collect pictures of themselves shruggingI also heartily recommend Margie Lawson‘s course on Empowering Character Emotions, which covers these repetitive gestures and how to write them “fresh” and “empowered,” when necessary—and how to tell when they’re not necessary at all. I also have her lecture packet on Writing Body Language and Dialogue Cues Like a Psychologist, which I’m sure builds upon those same principles (but I haven’t chiseled out the time to read it yet. Shame on me!). Margie teaches Empowering Character Emotions online in March (it was $30 last year) and the lecture packets are available year-round ($22—both are a great deal!) (and I only wish I were affiliated with her 😉 ).

Come up with a stable of original expressions

This is also from Margie Lawson (with a little interpretation from me). I realized I have a lot of sarcasm in my MS (which I love), and there were only about five gestures of sarcasm (folded arms, rolling eyes, one raised eyebrow, scoffing, pursed lips, if I remember correctly). Since I already knew the emotion I was going for, I set out to write some original, creative gestures that conveyed sarcasm. Then I had a collection of gestures to draw on and even extrapolate from further. I also found The Bookshelf Muse’s Emotion Thesaurus super-helpful!

Pick the body part first

You could do any of these by picking a lesser-used body part. I once played this writers’ game where two members of the group had to act out a scene and the rest of us had to write about their emotions using assigned body parts. I had wrists and heels. It was awesome! One character stomped around hard enough to leave half-moons in the cement floor. Another offered apologetic wrists. Another had her arms fly open like windshield wipers. Will I ever use those? Maybe not. But that kind of vivid, imaginative imagery can help you create better, more appropriate images.

Monitoring your gestures

I’m proudest of this one because I came up with it myself (extrapolated from Margie’s EDITS system). When editing a scene, make a note of what body part/area is used in the line: hands, eyes/eyebrows, shoulders, lips/mouth, etc., in the margin. Then read the list aloud for the whole scene/chapter. This helped me pinpoint repetitive or too-similar gestures in close context as well as look at the gestures themselves. If I found I had ARMS too close to one another, I could look at those two gestures quickly and easily to see how similar they were.

Pull out the sentences en masse

New to the 2012 edition! I wrote a bit of code to make Word pull out all the sentences that use these gesture crutches, and you can customize it to your word list (there’s also a great version by Paul Edelstein for code-o-phobes!). I’ll probably still use the monitoring technique above to make sure I’m not using any one body part too often in a scene, but now I can focus on just my use of smiles or nods throughout the book to make sure they’re necessary, not repetitive, and fresh.

What do you think? How do you keep yourself from repeating the same conversational gestures?

Photo credits: crutches on orange backgroundChristian Guthier; my cousin’s Facebook.

Mass editing with Word Macros

This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series Gesture crutches

Freshen up your writing faster!

So I recently took a fantastic class from the inimitable Margie Lawson. I discovered that some of the editing tasks I view as drudgery are a lot easier to do when they’re assignments in a class. (I love school.)

gesture crutchesOne of these drudgerous tasks was to collect all the sentences that used a number of gesture crutches from the first 50 pages and look for repetition and trends, finding the uses you can cut (you don’t need a nod if someone says yes or just complies, etc.), and freshening up your gestures.

The most time-consuming, drudgerous (it’s a word now, okay?) part was actually finding the sentences, cutting and pasting them into a new document. It took me hours to go through my MS 50 pages at a time. HOURS. Not even a quarter of the way through, I knew I had to do something else.

I needed a macro.

A macro is a bit of code you can use with a program to automate a task. Abby Annis introduced me to macros, and Margie classmate Greg Henry provided a few useful writers’ macros in class. I know lots of great writers who use macros to catch clichés;s, throwaway words (just, really, very, etc.). I wanted to take this a little further.

Why use a macro?

I know (because more than one person has said this to me) this sounds needlessly complex. “Can I just use Find/Search?” you might ask. And more than one person has told me about Word 2010’s navigation panel, which shows your searches, excerpts where the text is found, gives you a use count (which you can do in any version of Word, but I digress), etc.

You are more than welcome to continue using Find-and-Replace. If you’re going to highlight or bold your terms, please use Find All (or Replace All + Formatting).

But here’s the advantages of using the macro:

  • This bit of code pulls the full sentences the term appears in (not just the 15 or so closest words) into a new document.
  • The new document is searchable.
  • The new document is ready to edit.
  • The new document lists the sentences side by side, instead of having to flip back and forth, wait for load times, etc.
  • The new document contains results for all of my terms, so I can find cross-term patterns, repetition and echoes more easily.
  • But most of all, it’s a lot faster & easier. The macro takes three mouse clicks to run over 40 searches, and cut and paste the results into a fresh document. It would take me 1800 mouse clicks just to go through each use of each of my terms. Plus highlighting the sentences and cutting and pasting them into a document for better comparison (instead of relying on my memory and the excerpts in the navigation pane)? Oy.

Can I just say that again? Once you spend 10-15 minutes setting up the macro, it takes less than five mouse clicks to “harvest” the results of 40+ searches (using find all word forms, too!).

If you’d rather click that Find button 1843 times, go for it. But I found that method much more time consuming. Again, it took me hours to get through a quarter of this task. It now takes seconds of effort. If that. The next manuscript? Three clicks. The one after that? Three clicks. The one from the drawer? Three clicks.

That’s the beauty of macros.

The EASY/Non-Techie Way

The immensely helpful Paul Edstein wrote a macro to do this all automatically for you. Download the Excel file he posted (you’ll see a security prompt to enable macros; do enable them). In that workbook, enter the word you want it to look for in A1 of Sheet 1, the next work in A1 of Sheet 2, etc. Put a ‘1’ in B1 if you want to search for ALL word forms (smile/smiling/smiles/smiled, etc.).

The macro runs on a folder rather than individual files, so unless your manuscript is the only Word document in the folder on your computer, you’ll need to make a new folder for it and copy or move the manuscript into that folder before you run the macro.

Again, all you have to do is put the words in the spreadsheet, and run the macro (click Developer > Macro. Named GetData, it will probably be the only one there!). Super easy, super user-friendly!

Read message #8 for a tip on how to edit the macro to include page numbers! (This does get a bit more technical, but it’s really just cut-and-paste!)

The MANUAL Way

I’m part of a family craft blog, and we reeeeally like to do things our own way: no patterns, no instructions. It’s either crafting by Braille, or, as we like to call it “being Wayward.”

I think that bled into this project. Before I saw Paul’s workbook, I spent hours configuring my own macro. To make your own macro, enable macros in Word Options. Check out Abby Annis’s detailed macro instructions for more help (except we won’t be recording this, but entering the code directly).

In the Developer ribbon, click Macros. Type a new name into the text box prompt and click “Create.”

Then cut and paste the below. (Delete the line Sub GrabbingCrutches() or you’ll break it!)

VBA:
Sub GrabbingCrutches() ' ' GrabbingCrutches Macro ' by Jordan McCollum, http://JordanMcCollum.com ' With massive help from http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread.php/135517-Macro-to-copy-from-one-document-to-another ' I'm not responsible if this breaks your computer! ' Please don't strip my name off this and redistribute it. Don't use my name for endorsing your project. ' Enjoy! Dim r As Range Dim myword As String Dim ThisDoc As Document Dim OtherDoc As Document MsgBox "Remember to open a new document for the results, and close others!" If Documents.Count <> 2 Then MsgBox "Must have two (and only two!) documents open." Exit Sub End If Set ThisDoc = ActiveDocument If ThisDoc = Documents(1) Then Set OtherDoc = Documents(2) Else Set OtherDoc = Documents(1) End If ' The next bit is the actual search. Cut and paste the code from here to the next green line, and change the word in quotes, to add more terms. myword = "nod" OtherDoc.range.InsertAfter mystring & vbCrLf ThisDoc.Activate Set r = ActiveDocument.Range With r.Find Do While .Execute(FindText:=myword, MatchAllWordForms:=True, Forward:=True) = True r.Expand Unit:=wdSentence r.Copy OtherDoc.range.InsertAfter r.Text OtherDoc.range.InsertAfter r.Information(wdActiveEndPageNumber) & vbCrLf r.Collapse 0 Loop End With OtherDoc.Activate Selection.Collapse 0 Selection.GoTo wdGoToBookmark, , , "\EndOfDoc" Selection.InsertBreak Type:=wdPageBreak ' End of the actual search. Paste the code again below (but before End Sub) and change the word in quotes. End Sub
VBA tags courtesy of www.thecodenet.com

Click Save, and you’re ready to go!

Before you use this, you need to open your manuscript, and another file where you want the sentences to go. (This will probably be a new file.) In your manuscript window, click on Macros, select the name you just gave the macro, and click “Run.” In minutes, every sentence using the words you listed will appear in your new file!

The output file is a little bit messy. I use Find-and-Replace (okay, well, actually another macro) to take out the extra returns and tabs, and I have to separate the sentences by keyword. I’m also trying to find a way to get it to print the page numbers UPDATED 23 July: found the code for both of these last two wishes and updated the code above! If anybody has any more solutions there, I’m open to your help!

EVEN Easier way

Lee Korven reached out (a reeeally long time ago, sorry!!) with this code:

Sub OverusedWords()
' OverusedWords Macro
    Dim r As range
    Dim ThisDoc As Document
    Dim OtherDoc As Document
    ' Set your own word list here
    Dim badWords() As Variant
    badWords = Array("nod", "shrug", "smile", "grin", "beam", "smirk")
' You can add more words in this list, just make sure they have straight double quotes around them and are separated by a comma, and the list ends with the parenthesis
    MsgBox "Remember to open a new document for the results, and close others!"
    If Documents.Count <> 2 Then
        MsgBox "Must have two (and only two!) documents open."
        Exit Sub
    End If
    Set ThisDoc = ActiveDocument
    If ThisDoc = Documents(1) Then
        Set OtherDoc = Documents(2)
    Else
        Set OtherDoc = Documents(1)
    End If
     ' The next bit is the actual search.
     Dim badword As Variant
    For Each badword In badWords
        OtherDoc.range.InsertAfter mystring & vbCrLf
        ThisDoc.Activate
        Set r = ActiveDocument.range
        With r.Find
            Do While .Execute(FindText:=badword, MatchAllWordForms:=True, Forward:=True) = True
                r.Expand Unit:=wdSentence
                r.Copy
                OtherDoc.range.InsertAfter r.Text
                OtherDoc.range.InsertAfter r.Information(wdActiveEndPageNumber) & vbCrLf
                r.Collapse 0
            Loop
        End With
        OtherDoc.Activate
        Selection.Collapse 0
        Selection.GoTo wdGoToBookmark, , , "\EndOfDoc"
        Selection.InsertBreak Type:=wdPageBreak
   Next
End Sub

I haven’t tried this yet, but it’s worked for Lee!

Wait, Now What Do I Do?

To get started, follow Abby Annis’s instructions on enabling macros through Figure 4.

In the Developer tab, click the Macros button.

This will bring up a box. Type in the name for your macro at the top and click the Create button.

This opens Visual Basic. It should have a line at the top reading Sub YOURMACRONAME(), so don’t copy Sub GrabbingCrutches() from the code above (unless you want to paste over it and use my great name). Paste the rest of the text (through End Sub) below the ‘ YOURNAMEMACRO macro line. Make sure there’s only one End Sub at the end of the file.

Now, look at the lines in green. Where it says ‘ The next bit is the actual search. Cut and paste the code from here to the next green line, and change the word in quotes, to add more terms., copy the code between that line and the next green line, and paste it as many times as you want the macro to run. Change the word in the first line in double quotes to the word you want to search for.

And Save!

Now, open your manuscript and a new file, and close everything else. In your manuscript, bring up the Developer ribbon and click Macros. Select your new macro from the list and click Run. Click OK on the reminder message that comes up, and that should do it!

My Word List

Is long. It includes gesture crutches, the most common body parts used in body language and visceral responses, and words to describe how dialogue is delivered.

nod
smile
grin
beam
smirk
laugh
lip
mouth
jaw
brow
eyebrow
eye
face
expression
look
gaze
glance
stare
glare
glower
scowl
face
head
frown
tears
hand
fist
arm
shrug
sigh
breathe
breath
blood
pulse
vein
adrenaline
energy
heart
stomach
gut
lung
chest
rib
ribcage
swallow
tone
voice
pitch
volume

My current manuscript is 275 pages long, and my (double spaced) output file from this macro is 100 pages long. I’m hard at work catching echoes and freshening up my body language. I use other macros to highlight words I overuse, “empty” words, and even sequencing words.

Now you’ve got all your crutches collected—now what? Check out these strategies for editing to the top 10 gesture crutches.

Photo credit: crutches on orange backgroundChristian Guthier