Words, Words, Words

 

As writers, we deal with words. Thousands and thousands of words. If you hope to have your writing stand out above others, you must choose your words carefully. 

When we write a first draft, our intent is to get the story written with the basic idesas, or the essay, or your article. The first draft is the bones, and later we edit and revise in order to flesh it out. Our aim is to polish the piece until it shines enough to be ready to submit for publication.

One of the things we do in our revision and editing process is to check for words that can be changed from mundane to magnificent. Well, maybe not magnificent but words that have a little sparkle that will enrich your story and appeal to the reader.

The poster for today shows a lengthy list of synonyms for the palin word 'want.' Using one of these synonyms is going to bring a bit more sparkle to your story. A few examples below:

A.  I want to go to the concert.

B.  I yearn for going to the concert.

C.  I have a great desire to attend the concert.

D.  I'm dying to attend that concert.

E.  I have a yen to attend the concert.

Sentence A is a simple one using 'want' while the other four are telling us the same thing but in a stronger, more interesting way. 

When you go through your first draft, look for simple words that can be changed. You might not simply insert one word for another. Instead, you can change the sentence around a bit in order to use better words. It's not a matter of pluck this one out, pop that one in. Look at the five sentences above and see how eliminating 'want' can change more than one word. 

If you write something like '...the green grass...' try something like '..the verdant prairie grass ...'  If you wrote 'He saw a river when he reached the top of the hill.' try 'He spied the silver ribbon of water from atop the bluff.'

We often hear advice to change passive verbs to active ones. When we write a first draft, we are quite apt to use far too many of those passive verbs. Many can be changed to active ones. It takes a bit of thought. The more you do this, the more it becomes habit, and your mind will start coming up with the active verbs even as you write the first draft. 

The more we do something, the easier it becomes. We establish habits even for something as simple as changing a generic type of word. Do a word search on your first draft with words like 'he, was, want, she, they' and other simple words that we often overuse. When you have a 1200 word essay, and you used 'was' a hundred times, fix it.' 

Writers should be the master of words, but sometimes we fall back on old reliable words. Instead, we should venture forth into the land of exciting, beautiful, descritpive words. We are like artists, but we paint with words instead of chalk or oils.