What's the word to leave out of your fiction most of the time?
Suddenly.
Almost everything happens suddenly.
A shot rings out.
She realizes there's a man behind her.
The waiter arrives to take your order. OK, I guess he could amble over to your table...
You don't have to ban the word totally, but it is over-used, especially by newer writers.
Ryan DeJonghe did an analysis and found that in his early fiction, Stephen King used one "suddenly" every ten pages; in his later fiction, only half as often.
A good way to convey the impact of something is to use short sentences, each a new paragraph:
They were laughing and re-telling the story of how Jason got so drunk one night that he passed out on his front lawn. Even twenty years later that one made Jason blush. The sound of the passing car didn't catch their attention. They did hear what sounded like the car backfiring.
A blossom of red appeared on Jason's forehead.
He blinked and fell over backward.
That's a case where "suddenly" wouldn't have helped; if anything, it would have detracted from the power of the sentence.
Suddenly the blog post ended.
