You would do your readers a courtesy to omit from your writing some of the words tediously overused in journalism.
Battle "Politics," said Mr. Dooley, "ain't beanbag." But neither is it an armed conflict. Neither are sporting events. And neither is the experience of having cancer. If you were to forgo military metaphors, you might discover how impoverished your imagination is.
Controversial Conflict, they told you in your newswriting class, is one of the fundamental news values. If there were no controversy, there would be no news and thus no story.
Currently If it's not happening now, why are you writing about it?
Dramatic This is a show-not-tell violation. If the circumstances you describe are not dramatic, using the word will not make them so to the reader.
Firestorm The Allied attack that destroyed Dresden, which Kurt Vonnegut described in Slaughterhouse-Five, involved such a multitude of incendiary bombs that the heat of the fires created great winds that made the fires doubly destructive. A group of ill-informed people shouting at a school board meeting does not constitute a firestorm.
First Are you sure of that? Are you really sure? You looked it up, didn't you?
Iconic Just don't. If you picked up a dictionary, you would be hard-pressed to find a common or proper noun that has not at some point been called "iconic." A word used to describe everything describes nothing.
Ironically Good idea to check whether what you actually mean is coincidentally.
Prestigious See Dramatic.
Saga Yes, you have a long, involved account. That does not make your story the Elder Edda.
The public may wish to comment with suggestions of additional words you could shun.
