Avoiding "Dead Wood" and Painting a Picture in Our Writing



       
"Dead Wood" is obvious cliche'd language that "floats there" and doesn't give the reader anything to latch onto.

Here is a sample opening statement to a student's essay: "The internet is a culmination of technology that has been brought together to create a platform for shared information."  Doesn't "culmination" already mean "brought together"? What if instead we said: "The internet is a culmination of technology that creates a shared platform for information."

Then again, what if we used active verbs? "Culmination" is an "tion" word, what many writers call "zombie words"; in other words, they are not active.  We can make words like this more alive if we put them in the present tense: "The technology of the internet culminates in shared information."

Or, what if we paint a picture instead.  What if we drop the sentence entirely? Everyone knows what the internet is.  Can we think of a better way to hook the reader?  What if instead we said something like "The internet lets people share their dreams: cat videos, political nightmares, embarrassing stories, family photos."

As an exercise, find sentence that you feel sounds "dead".

Then, re-write the sentence so it paints a picture.  

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