Words

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say. Anaïs Nin

Aisling McCabe told us today that a teacher pulled her up about her overuse of “he said”, “she said”.

Was the teacher correct in doing this? It’s an interesting question. On the one hand I can see where the teacher was going: she wished to encourage Aisling to vary her choice of words. Nothing wrong with that.

But personally I’ve always believed that your reader won’t even notice the words “she said”. They become like non-words among the other, more interesting, words that make up your writing. If you asked me how many times I used the word “the” so far I would not be able to tell you, yet I distinctly recall using the words “overuse” and “encourage”. The first rings alarm bells in me; the second is very positive; therefore I remember those words because they’re important.

This is not to say that repetition is good. Often it isn’t, and you should avoid it whenever you can. Notice the way I’ve alternated “recall” and “remember” in the previous paragraph. It’s lazy to use the one too often, and your writing will be more interesting if you vary your vocabulary.

Bear in mind too that very few words have an exact equivalent. There are situations that call for the word “remember” and others where “recall” is more appropriate. The word “recollect” also has a subtly different meaning. You could even experiment with a phrase such as “bring to mind”. Sometimes you’ll encounter a situation in your writing where a phrase is stronger than a single word: “She knew the sort of man he was; he brought to mind an uncle she particularly loathed.” You could have written “he reminded her of” but the first phrase is perhaps more powerful.

There are of course words that have no alternatives and it’s just plain silly to try frantically to find alternatives. “Grass” is one. So is “roof”. So is “hotel”. So is “street”. You can’t in all conscience write “verdure” or “ceiling” or “guesthouse” or “thoroughfare”. The first sounds like something from the 18th century; a ceiling comes under a roof; a guesthouse is in a different class from a hotel, and a thoroughfare is a busy street (it originally meant a “through street”). Similarly if you’re writing about a dog you should avoid alternating words like “cur” and “hound”. They have other meanings. “Dog” is perfectly fine and if it becomes too repetitious you can resort to “the animal” or the dog's name. But never go for awkward constructs such as “her four-footed friend”.

Ten-dollar words
An American friend of mine calls big words $10 words. (This obviously dates from a time long ago when $10 could buy you a lot in the USA.) He generally takes that to mean words your readers would be unfamiliar with – and he doesn’t like them. The words, not the readers :0)

He’s probably right. You want your stuff to be read and enjoyed. You want your book or short story to be a page-turner – and how are you going to achieve that when your readers have to consult the dictionary every so often?

At the same time you wish to leave your readers with the idea that you've given them something new. How else are they going to remember you or your work? Very often it’s a beautifully crafted simile or a fine turn of phrase that will leave a lasting impression. Or, as Katie Irwin pointed out today, it’s an unfamiliar word like “melancholy”. Sometimes words can stir echoes in us. They seem to reach places we weren’t aware of. Truth be told, we know about five times the number of words we actually use, in speech or in writing.

A trick I use quite often works something like this. I’ll introduce a $10 word, then supply a clue to its meaning in the sentence that follows. I’ll write: “Jenny was astonished to come face to face with a real-life griffin. She’d always assumed that a creature which was half eagle and half lion was the stuff of legend.”

Out-Rowling Rowling
There are innumerable ways of telling the same story. There are an unlimited number of words that can be used to say more or less the same thing. Take the Bible: in the English language alone there are at least TWENTY different versions. Essentially the message is the same, yet the choice of words renders each one slightly different. Here’s a line from St Luke as it appears in the New International Version:

Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah and wondering why he stayed so long in the temple.

And the same line in the older, King James, version of the Bible:

And the people waited for Zacharias, and marvelled that he lingered so long in the temple.

In short, if even the Bible (the greatest bestseller of all time) can produce so many variations, isn’t every piece of writing open to improvement? Of course it is. Today you saw how you can improve on JK Rowling’s work. You saw that there are any number of ways of saying the same things she said – and better! If you wish to extend your vocabulary you break out the thesaurus.

Unhappy with the word “happy”? Let’s try:

Cheerful, cheery, merry, joyful, jovial, jolly, jocular, gleeful, carefree, untroubled, delighted, smiling, beaming, grinning, joyous, beatific, thrilled, elated, exhilarated, ecstatic, blissful, euphoric, overjoyed, exultant, rapturous, lighthearted, pleased, contented, content, satisfied, gratified, buoyant, radiant, sunny, blithe, jubilant, chirpy.

And if a single word isn’t enough, you can go for a phrase:

In good spirits, in a good mood, in seventh heaven, on cloud nine, walking on air, jumping for joy, over the moon, on top of the world, tickled pink, on a high.

Plenty more where they came from. We are talking here about the richest language in the world. My "shorter" Oxford Dictionary contains over 500,000 words. Why leave them unused?

P.S. Has anyone come up with a better simile for those bubbles? The goldfishes didn't really work for me....