There's a common line of advice in writing that encourages you to "kill your darlings."

It’s a reminder that some of the bits we might need to cut are some of the bits we love best about early drafts of our work—your darlings are the passages, phrases, expressions that bring you joy but work against the clarity and efficacy of your writing. Most commonly heard in creative contexts, academic authors are no less susceptible to misguided love in their work. But killing your darlings seems drastic. Let's ease into the idea and start with something a little more bureaucratic:

Audit your verbs.

Audits aren't something we generally look forward to and are rarely something we undertake voluntarily. But when the alternative is murder, audits sound more appealing. A verb audit serves the same goals of clarity and efficiency as darling-killing, but we'll carry it out on parts of the text that are less likely to be emotionally charged. In fact, a good audit can help you fall in love with parts of your text that you never realized deserved a second look.

First you need a text. Sit down with an article or chapter of yours and pull out a highlighter, either physical or virtual. Go through the text and mark all the verbs.

We're looking for two things: how active your verbs are and how energetic they are. Yes, those sound the same. But they are not.

The active and passive voices are likely something you have been made aware of. Let me rephrase that: Someone has told you about active and passive voices before.

The passive voice is when the subject is on the receiving end of an action ("you have been made aware"); the active voice is when the subject does the doing ("Someone told you"). Active and passive voices are tricky in academic writing: passive voices sound more objective but can be dull and hard to follow. For now, suffice it to say that unless you have a very good reason, always try for an active voice. Reshape as many passive phrases as possible into active ones. But just because a verb is active doesn't mean it's energetic. (Likewise, just because a construction is passive doesn't mean it has to be dull.)

The easiest place to find active verb candidates that still need more energy are in clumsy phrases like "the aim of this paper is..." or "the results of the study are..." Commonly called signposts, these expressions are useful for orienting both readers and writers in the text, but in doing so, they risk sedating it.

If "the aim of the paper is to deconstruct..." why not say, "this paper aims to deconstruct..."? Even better, why not just "this paper deconstructs..."?

Think about the relative power of the images that these verbs create: is, aims, deconstructs. The first one is static, the second one carries some tension, like a taught bowstring, but the third one hits the target: it’s concise, and it shoots an active image in the reader's mind for clarity.

Don't stop at these nominal phrases, though; every verb deserves a second look.

Once you've audited your verbs, you can think about other places to invigorate the text in the service clear, efficient, engaging prose. After all, why let the death of your darlings be done by an editor? Kill them yourself.