On Choosing the Right Word
“Picky! Picky!” wasn’t exactly a compliment when Mom aimed it at you at the dinner table. You were supposed to eat everything on the plate and have no preferences.
But we writers can hardly be picky enough when it comes to choosing just the right word. It’s a primary duty of a prose author—let alone a poet—to expend some effort in finding the expression that captures exactly the image she wants to convey. The one that rolls most smoothly over the reader’s mental or physical tongue. The one that the protagonist is most likely to use without betraying his carefully layered character.
Lucky Us
Because of its dual origin, English is a language particularly rich in synonyms. For that reason, it’s reasonable to say one shouldn’t reuse the same word too frequently in close proximity, except for the obvious articles and conjunctions, but even there, we have room for variation. This is a luxury that many tongues cannot afford—their vocabulary is simply too poor. In English, a poor vocabulary isn’t a sign of good writing. One may purposely impoverish one’s language for a particular effect (The Sound and the Fury, I’m looking at you), but by and large, reading injects a certain intellectual richness into the reader’s world. The great classics definitely bear witness to this.
(Hey, editors: did you catch the cringe-worthy use of reason twice in one sentence?)
Make All Things New
Turning one’s hand to poetry now and again is a wonderful exercise for prose writers. The whole genre is a tissue of perfectly chosen words. Because a poem tends to be so lapidary, each word counts. One seeks the unexpected, but not just things chosen at random. Words that set up a perfect metaphor—that burn a fresh image into the reader’s brain and makes them think, “I’ve never thought of that before, but it sure is true.”
Listen Up
Words have to sound right too. And there is an issue we novelists need to keep in mind. Words have a sound. Strung together, they set up a rhythm. If handled masterfully, that can create a mood, but it can also become nursery-rhymish or even funny. I was reading a friend’s manuscript the other day (a very good one) and suddenly I hit a patch that was adjective-adjective-noun, adjective-adjective-noun for the better part of a paragraph. It started sounding sing-songy. She needed to ax a few of those second adjectives to vary the pattern. And it was clear she had not read that part out loud to herself, as she usually does, because it’s often the sound that betrays poorly chosen words. I think I’ve told the story on myself about the time I discovered I had faint, fluttering, and flame in the same sentence. Ugh! To add one more f, it was funny.
Selective Treasure
The easiest way to inject a little variation into one’s writing is to hit the thesaurus. But walk wary—few of its synonyms are truly synonymous. Almost every one carries a load of nuances. Look up the word smile: grin, smirk, chuckle, simper, laugh, etc. A grin is very different than a simper. A smirk is far from being a laugh—which is definitely not just a smile anyway (in French, a smile is a sub-laugh, sous-rire, sourire). So, one still needs to make a careful choice. If your character is smug and contemptuous, let him smirk. But not otherwise.
I hope these brief thoughts will get us all a little more attuned to seeking out the perfect word for every occasion. If your readers cry “Picky! Picky!” don’t look guilty and shovel down your peas. It’s a high compliment!