FIND REPEATED/Overused Words & FIX Passive Voice
Kill Your Darlings: Instant Writing Analysis
Eliminate overused words and passive voice instantly. Get three free document analyses, and if you find the app useful—and you probably will!—get the one year pro subscription for less than $15—INCLUDES the companion app for Adverbs.
Using the apps is super easy: 1) upload or drop your docx into the Analyze container. You can run a report on a chapter or chapters or any excerpt up to 4000 words - perfect for chapters, scenes, or excerpts. 2) Retrieve your report, and see all your overused words, passive voice and adverbs color highlighted for easy review. That's it. Safe and Easy credit card or debit payment with Stripe.For fiction writers, journalists, copywriters, speech writers, teachers, students, and more.
How it works: Upload your Word docx file for one-step analysis. In under a minute, get a report with:• Overused words highlighted in blue• Passive voice highlighted in yellow
* Blood, Sweat, Tears & Adverbs (the included companion app) highlighted in pink.
Why use it: See exactly what needs fixing before final editing. Don't burden yourself or your editor with easy fixes you can handle yourself. Other editing programs are expensive and time-consuming - this is your quick "pre-edit" step.Perfect for your writing routine: After your writing session, review what Kill Your Darlings found. Catch those writing tics that follow you from book to book and the exhaustion-induced mistakes from pushing through drafts.
Fix the easy stuff now, handle complex editing later.
An ADVERB is a word that adds more information about place, time, manner, cause or degree to a verb, an adjective, a phrase, or another adverb. Adverbs answer questions such as how, when, where, or to what extent something happens.
Oxford English Dictionary
"Every adjective and adverb is worth five cents. Every verb is worth fifty cents." ~ Mary Oliver
"Adverbs are a sign that you've used the wrong verb." ~ Annie Dillard
"I am dead to adverbs; they cannot excite me. To misplace an adverb is a thing which I am able to do with frozen indifference; it can never give me a pang. There are subtleties which I cannot master at all - they confuse me, they mean absolutely nothing to me - and this adverb plague is one of them." ~ Mark Twain.
blood, sweat, tears and Adverbs, including dozens & dozens that DON'T end in -ly
Why All the Adverb Bashing? Because over-relying on adverbs leads straight to "telling" instead of "showing"! Too many adverbs mean you're TELLING readers what to feel instead of SHOWING them.
Why adverbs get called lazy writing:
Redundancy: Don't state what the verb already implies. Skip "whispered softly" or "shouted loudly." (Though "barely audible whisper" works because it adds new info.)Telling vs. showing: Instead of saying a character is angry—describe their clenched fists, sharp tone, or slamming doors.Weak verbs: Replace "walked slowly" with stronger verbs like "shuffled" or "trudged."
The real problem: Adverb overuse creates wordy, cluttered prose that's less direct and impactful. Ironically, writers add adverbs thinking they're being more precise—but they're actually being less precise.
Don't rob readers of their own experience and mental images. Let them feel the story instead of being told how to feel it.
HOW IT WORKS: RUN YOUR LATEST WORD DOCX, EXCERPT OR CHAPTER THROUGH THE
BLOOD, SWEAT, TEARS & ADVERBS APP AND BST&A HIGHLIGHTS ALL YOUR ADVERBS ...A FEW YOU'LL WANT TO KEEP, MOST WILL BE Rapidly, Memorably, Horribly UNALIVED. Safely use any credit or debit card via Stripe.
is this anything like cleaning the house before the cleaning person (REAL EDITOR) arrives?
Why, yes, yes it is.
.png)
OK, but what exactly IS passive voice?
She doctored her sandwich with all kinds of garni.
Her sandwich was doctored with all kinds of passive voice garni.
Get it?
"Do things to your sammie, but STOP letting your sammie have things done
TO it!"
.jpg)
Your Honor, I present The Seven Most Overused Words in Fiction:
so, very, just, like, nodded and those twin bits of awfulness, chuckled* and moist *OK, 'chuckled' is admittedly a personal moment of loathing brought to you by our founder (who is a writer)
Contact us
Get in touch
Have questions or need assistance? Our team (of two, LOL) is here to help! Reach out to us anytime for support or information, and we'll get back to you.