Create A List of Words To Save

I'm a word person. If you're a writer, so are you. Many people deal with words but writers do so on a deeper level than most. 

Because words are so important to our writing world, we need to have storehouses of them. When a writer wants to give the reader a visual image, he/she goes to that storehouse and pulls the best words from it. 

I saw a short writing exercise yesterday which I'm going to expand upon here. The idea given was to write as many words as possible that describe eyes. That's fine but why not take it a step farther and add more? 

For the exercise, make lists of words (or full phrases) that could be used to describe the following: 

• hair
• hands
• ears
• eyes
• mouth
• skin color
• nose
• clothing
• feet
• shoes

Try to do this exercise on your own. Use a thesaurus if you must. Keep a file of the lists you make. You can refer to the words when needed. When you make the lists, some of these words are going to remain in the recesses of your mind to be used when needed. You may want to add more words as they come to you at a later time.

The words I've chosen today are all for developing characters in your story or novel. You can do the same with places, too, and weather, buildings or transportation vehicles.Try my list above first and then create more lists to keep on file.