Word Tics

No matter how much you don't want to do this, almost certainly in your manuscript you have included word tics. These little buggers are simply words that you overuse, your list of personal cliches that make sense to you but will start to grate on a reader if used too often. For example, in my first manuscript I found that my characters kept "murmuring" to each other.

I found a website that counts the incidence of words in a passage and lists them from most to least common. "The" and "and" appear, of course (although you can specify not to search for little words), but then you'll find the specific words used in your writing.

Great tool! http://www.wordcounter.com/