Just finished Julie Anne Peters’s LUNA — which I liked, and about which I will have more to say this week — and was struck by two crutch words she uses, as physical descriptions, over and over: someone’s eyes widening — generally to express sarcastic intent or signal someone to stop something — and someone’s “spine fusing.”
The second stood out to me because the first time, it struck me as a nice description of someone stiffening; by the third or fourth time, though, I was over it. And the first was noticeable because I have different associations with eyes widening, so all the many usages of this felt odd.
Do you notice crutch words when you read? There was one that drove me mad in TWILIGHT (especially, as I recall, in NEW MOON), but now I’m blanking on what it was. Googling turned up a different one of Meyer’s crutches I can attest to — Bella “glaring” at Edward.
And writing this post, I can see what one of my own crutch phrases is — something “striking me.” (I edited a few out.)
-->Feed me text
September 3, 2009 at 1:39 am
Crutch words suck to read, but they’re so hard to catch in your own stuff! I think there are programs out there to help you catch phrases/words that are overused, but I can’t remember what they’re called.
September 8, 2009 at 12:01 pm
I noticed that about Twilight, too. The characters also mumble, mutter, and grumble a whole lot.
In the book Define Normal, the phrases “she widened her eyes” and “her face flared” came up a bunch of times. I think the eye-widening meant sarcasm there, too. The face-flaring seemed to imply embarrassment. It was like the author meant to write “flushed” but got mixed up.
September 9, 2009 at 3:21 pm
It was the snickering that drove me nuts in Twilight. Edward was constantly snickering, whether stuff was funny or not (usually not). The last straw came when Edward “snickered unexpectedly.” I didn’t understand how that could be.
September 9, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Oh god, do I agree on all these overused Twilight words.
None of them, though, is the one that I was thinking of, and I’m so mad I can’t recall what it was… it was an adjective, I believe.
Kelly: I wonder if it’s the same program Amazon uses to tell you the “statistically improbable phrases” in books?
September 10, 2009 at 1:28 am
Hmm, I don’t know! I feel like I saw a program designed specifically for writers to use that did other stuff besides just finding the overused phrases, but I can’t remember the name of it or anything…oops!