Yep! One of my favorite tricks to tighten text and strengthen descriptions is to use a custom Word macro.
In early drafts, it’s easy to filter words or overused terms to creep into your prose.
Filter words distance the reader from the sensation you’re describing. (“I heard car horns blaring and felt the heat radiating off the blacktop.” vs “Horns blared and heat radiated off the blacktop.”).
Overused terms are the ones that always seem to slip into your writing. Everyone has their own terms… one of my mine is ‘just’. (“I stood just at the brink.” vs “I stood at the brink.”)
It’s easy to miss these problems on an edit pass, and running a Find and Replace is overkill. You don’t need to eliminate every instance, just the ones that weaken your writing. (The use of ‘just’ in that sentence is totally intentional, thank-yoou-very-much.)
A custom Word macro can highlight the words or terms you’re looking for, allowing you to easily find them and decide whether to edit on a case-by-case basis.
Don’t always work in Word? Me either! I often export prose or game scripts from Scrivener and Google Docs into Word, then run the macro. I pull up both docs on dual monitors and make edits directly in my working software.
(Hat tip to Brian Justus, who shared this tip and taught me a bit of Visual Basic years ago!)
Ready to learn more? Here’s a Microsoft tutorial on creating your own macro in the comments.