Darryl from the DailyPost received an early Christmas present, a dictionary of phrases if you will and his question was, “how often do you use flotsam phrases if at all?” These phrases are words in a sentence that don’t add any overall value to the piece. Examples are ” the fact of the matter, it seems to me, in terms of, words that fill space. I think that I must have used quite a bit of these during the 50,000 word writing exercise, there were a few days where I was a little desperate trying to pull words out of my head and throwing them onto the page.
I don’t see the harm in using them especially in fictional pieces, if the work were an intellectual piece I would question the use of “filler” words because ideally when you are writing seriously there should be a reason for every word on the page. I suppose that could be applied to any work because the thought of any of our WordPress friends just throwing words into a sentence willy-nilly without thought or reason would be insulting to them so I rescind what I said previously.
I’m glad that Darryl brought the phrase to my attention because it has made me more mindful of what I’m putting to paper even if I do inadvertently use those phrases every now and again.
laurieanichols 