Getting Rid of "That" in Your Writing

I don't even have a clue what to blog about this week, but I ran into a really funny issue last night when I was doing a special revision of my current WIP (about the mad scientist and wings. It gets ugly....).

I learned from K.M. Weiland's blog, Wordplay, a super awesome blog on the craft, how to do a really neat trick to catch every instance of overusing the word "that" in your fiction writing. Because, we all overuse it, don't we? It's just one of those words that<--right here, we don't even realize we're writing and don't even notice while reading, either! Ugh... It is frustrating, but you can do the following trick to catch yourself before you send your little darlings out into the cruel, "that"-hating world.

Open up your document and do a "Replace" search function on the word "that" for every instance it shows up in the document. In the line where it asks you what word to replace it with, put in a word you are sure to notice every time you read it. In fact, put it in ALL-CAPs because it will stand out a lot better and you'll be even more sure not to gloss over it.

So, which word did I use to replace "that" with? "POOP," in all-caps even. And, when I came across the replacements of "that" with "POOP," they read something like this:
  

“Thank you,” he said, coughing out the words. “I’m eternally grateful to you. You know, I sought you out because I had a feeling I could trust you. I was right about POOP.”

***

She would never say something so candid and informal like POOP to him while [he was] conscious, but she thought like this on a regular basis, especially on days like these. 

Regarding the second one, of course she wouldn't say something like that to her boss! That one actually made sense, interestingly enough. Needless to say, I busted my gut three ways to Sunday while revising my partial manuscript last night. OH, it was so much fun, I could barely think straight! But, most importantly, I caught all 50 of those "that" buggers and got rid of the ones that really didn't need to be there. 


Give this trick a shot if you suspect you repeat certain words way too often in your writing. It ought to clean it right up!