A book was recommended to me. The premise was fun, but the author exhibited a writing tic that had me screaming and casting the book aside by Chapter 4.
The prose was littered with somehow, somewhere, sometime, someone, and something.
Someone tidied my study while I was at the museum.
Is it really a mystery who performed that act, or is there a known single suspect for this unobserved occurrence?
The maid tidied my study while I was at the museum.
Mother tidied my study while I was at the museum.
The AutoSweep 3000 tidied my study while I was at the museum.
Specificity draws the reader deeper into the story. Who performs domestic chores is worldbuilding. If a character doesn’t know who cleans up after them, they are either unsustainably oblivious or a dismissive asshole.
Somewhere, a bell tolled.
Is it really a mystery where the sound originates, or could the character make an educated guess?
The bells of St. Anthony’s tolled.
The firehouse bell tolled.
Back at the house, the dinner bell tolled.
If the bell isn’t significant enough to identify the source, why are you mentioning it at all? It’s not even “adding atmosphere” if the reader has no way of knowing the nature of the tolling bell.
Somehow, she picked the lock of my cell.
Why not simply “She picked the lock of my cell”? What is “somehow” meant to add here?
Depending on the nature of the door to said cell, either you can see the lockpicker:
After a furtive glance up and down the corridor, she applied a pair of slim metal tools to the lock.
Ignoring the glassy-eyed guard and his ring of keys, she wiggled her fingers at the lock and let magic rearrange the tumblers inside.
Or you can’t:
There came a sound like a rat scratching at the lock, and then the door swung open to reveal my rescuer tucking a pin back into her towering coiffure.
Voila! You don’t have to research lockpicking! You can let it be assumed the person doing it has the expertise, and the POV character’s lack of knowledge isn’t spotlighted by “I dunno, somehow, duh.”
Sometime later, we arrived at the citadel.
What time later?
Five minutes later, we arrived at the citadel.
Four hours later, we arrived at the citadel.
After six days of hard riding, we arrived at the citadel to find Cerula long gone and the blood of innocents decorating the walls.
How long it takes to get from Point A to Point B suggests distance and urgency. If the distance doesn’t matter and there is no urgency, just write “We arrived at the citadel” and don’t waste words on the time of transit.
Something cracked in my spine.
A glow stick? A code? A windshield? What thing cracked?
My spine cracked.
The second blow to my spine produced an audible crack, and the nerves down to my left foot flashed bright and hot like lightning.
A novel isn’t a conversation in which the other party can ask you to elaborate when you’ve been vague. You get one chance to provide all the information you want readers to have.
A late-stage editing pass should include searches for somehow, somewhere, sometime, someone/somebody, and something. Take a minute to consider whether a specific alternative to each vague some-word would be preferable to an authorial shrug. The only some-words that should make it to publication are those where the specific is genuinely unknowable or the intent is to be vague or misleading.
Otherwise, it seems like the author didn’t care about the details, and if they didn’t, why would I care about their story?