Writing Saturday; Words

12:43 PM

Writing is all about words, so why in the world am I doing a writing Saturday post on words? Because if we are not careful and use words with intention, our writing becomes dull and no one wants to read it. We can make an entire sentence sound more interesting by the words that we use. Here is an example;

1. He just would not calm down.

2. He just would not be consoled.

I changed the entire tone of the sentence by changing two words. See how powerful our word choice can be? However, in order to be able to use words like that, we have to know them. So how do we build a better vocabulary? I have found two very good ways to do this. The first is to read old books. Some of the words and phrases that they use are wonderful but little used. Some of my favorite old authors are G.A. Henty, Grace Livingstone Hill, Louis May Alcott, and Jane Austin, among others. I encourage you to read old books and look up the words that you don’t know. Maybe you could even use them in your next book or blog post.

Another thing that that I have used to expand my vocabulary is the thesaurus. For instance, yesterday I looked up the word heir (as in heir to a throne) just for fun, and here are some of the ones I got; successor, inheritor, beneficiary, legatee, recipient. Now, some of those wouldn’t work for my story, but some of those might work better than the word heir.

Do you have some ideas on how we can expand our vocabulary with new words?

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4 comments

  1. Great idea! My younger sister and I like to look up new words in the dictonary to find new words for our stories :)

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  2. Sorry I didn't reply sooner:P Business is an understatement about my life lately! I am doing well, how about you?

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  3. Hi Sarah,

    Thank you so much for checking out me blog. I really like your blog! Yes, I still live in Texas. What part of Texas do you live in.

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