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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30746
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30746
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Delete it ruthlessly. As writers, we are often addicted to the clever phrase (or the phrase that seems clever at the time). But we succeed or fail not as crafters of phrases but at tellers of stories. The storyteller in you has to keep the writer in you on a short leash or your story is going to get lost in clever phrases that are, in the cold light of story, "just flat, cringey, contrived, life-less."

Now, when you delete them is a separate question. The cult of the reckless first draft is strong in the writing community at the moment -- plow on at all costs without pausing to edit. That's fine if the result is a story that just needs the prose cleaned up. Some writers are perhaps fine intuitive storytellers who can get the story right the first time and just need additional drafts to clean up the prose.

But if the love of clever phrases is letting the writer in you rides roughshod over the storyteller in you (as it frequently seems to do in me) then the reckless first draft approach seems to produce only a tangled mess of clever phrases that don't add up to a story. In this case, I think you have to squash the clever phrases as soon as you detect them, go back and fix them before you move on because the chances are that they cover up a lack of proper storytelling that is going to come back to bite you later if you don't fix it.

Original score: 11