My Writer’s Digest magazine arrived. I browse through it over days as time allows, but an opening ad caught my eye talking about word choices.
This program promised to have all possible word choices in front of a writer instantly. What happened to having a large vocabulary? What about a dictionary or a thesaurus?
Writing advice often includes doing wide ranging reading in a variety of genres. What do people do as they read? Skip over the words they don’t know? Or are the books they choose those with limited vocabularies in them?
When making word choices, there is more to consider than if a word sounds good. That word may be a disaster in your story.
Words have connotations and denotations. The denotation or definition may sound fine. The connotation or people’s perception of the word may sabotage its use.
How many words can you think of with very different meanings? Girdle? Gay? Queer? Dick?
How about homonyms? Do you use to, two or too? How about weather, whether and wether? Spellcheck and Grammar check is little to no help.
I faced lots of word choices while writing “For Love of Goats” as it depends on not only the meaning, but the sounds of words. It’s a good thing I like dictionaries.
In “For Love of Goats” each letter of the alphabet is targeted for a tongue twister or story about goats. Both used alliteration.
I started by looking through the dictionary list of words for that letter or sound in the cases of c, q, and k. Did I know all the words? No. That’s what definitions are for.
Looking over these word choices, a story idea might come to mind. Some were harder than others. Q took several tries as did z.
Yes, the lists were valuable helps. But a large vocabulary was the biggest help.
You don’t have a large vocabulary? Try Qwilleran’s method (The Cat Who books). Flip open a dictionary and point to a word. If you already know it, try again. Read the definition and try using that word several times during the day.
And keep a dictionary near as you choose books with words you don’t know. Don’t skip them. Look them up. Your writing may get more interesting.