Improving Vocabulary

Rose English · Jul 23, 2009

I did a search for 'vocabulary' and didn't see any obvious threads, so I would like to pose a question, for your thoughts please.

I'm a novice writer with heaps to learn. I'm concerned that this is going to sound like a very weird question, but I'll go ahead anyway. One of the things I struggle with is that, to me, my writing doesn't 'sound intelligent' enough. I can't think of a more honest way to put it than that.

I feel it's more to do with the language I use. It's about...precision. It's about there being one word that would say exactly what I mean, if only I knew what the word was.

So what I want to know is, should I actively seek different words, and if so, how could I do that? The only things I can think of is referring to a thesauraus every five minutes, and generally reading more (which I do as much of as I can; mostly in the contemporary/women's fiction genres, but a few classics as well).

If it helps any, my favourite authors are Elizabeth Buchan, Daphne Du Maurier, Joanna Trollope. To my mind they write simple but elegant, insightful prose. And that's what I aspire to.

Hope this makes some sort of sense

Wark · Jul 23, 2009

I use thesaurus.com. It's the only way to plod yourself away from walking sadly. Or trudge even.

[didn't use thesaurus, too lazy]

But cut out the adverbs and then try to figure out what you could replace the verb with to keep the meaning. You may not need a thesaurus.

CaroGirl · Jul 23, 2009

No. Never use a word unless you know exactly what it means and how to use it. To expand your natural vocabulary, read, read and read. That is all.

TheIT · Jul 23, 2009

Read. Read a lot and read from varied sources. IMHO, that's the best way to improve vocabulary.

The problem with going to the thesaurus is that it's too easy to choose an unfamiliar word that seems like it might fit but has connotations you might not know, so the word really doesn't match the setting. I'd rather read clearly written text using ordinary words that convey the proper meaning than read ten-dollar words that seem like the author's trying too hard to sound "writerly" (whatever that means).

Ever hear the Mark Twain quote about choosing the almost right word rather than the right word being like the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning? Words are tools. Broaden your horizons so you have more tools to choose from.

Kitty Pryde · Jul 23, 2009

Read! and mark the pages that have words you don't know. When you get the chance, go to dictionary.com and look up all those words and then you will know what they mean. (This was advice given to me in high school re: passing the SATs, and it expanded my vocab a lot, way beyond what I needed for SATs.) There are also novels specifically written to boost your vocabulary. I haven't read them but it seems like a quicker way of doing things maybe. I'd think they are engaging, because they are meant to benefit poor old studying high schoolers. Do an Amazon search for vocabulary novel.

Sophia · Jul 23, 2009

I think it's a good question and a good aim. I think reading widely is the best way, but there are also some fun ways of learning at least one new word a day on the web: Dictionary.com lets you subscribe to their Word of the Day, which e-mails you daily with a relatively unknown word and its dictionary entry. Wordsmith.org offers this, too. Try a Google search for several more.

bettielee · Jul 23, 2009

CaroGirl said:
No. Never use a word unless you know exactly what it means and how to use it. To expand your natural vocabulary, read, read and read. That is all.

CaroGirl beat me to it! You don't have to smart yourself up, really. Using fussy words just makes your writing fussy, not better. You listed a great batch of authors, and I bet your vocabulary is just fine. It might be that you need more practice, because I felt this same way; the inability to put across EXACTLY what I wanted to say. It went away with more reading and more practice.

Good luck!

Bufty · Jul 23, 2009

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who reads as you do and has 'Embrace imperfection' in the advice section of their profile is worrying unnecessarily about vocabulary. The 'right' word will always come to mind at the right time.

Matera the Mad · Jul 23, 2009

It's how you put words together that creates precision.

If you use a thesaurus, use a dictionary. Please.

Libbie · Jul 23, 2009

I think it's more important for your writing to sound honest than "intelligent." You can say something important and real without using big words. However, developing your vocabulary can't hurt you.

The thesaurus is a great place to start, as already recommended. Just make sure you know what the words mean before you use them. Team up a dictionary with a thesaurus and you will seldom go wrong. And, of course, READING! The more you read, the more you will learn.

If you get frustrated by having to pause in your writing to look up alternatives and would rather have a larger pool to draw from, consider doing crosswords and other word puzzles, such as Scrabble (there's an online version at lexulous.com that's free. You can play against the computer. Don't let it cut into your writing time, though!)

john barnes on toast · Jul 24, 2009

It's a good point that somebody made about not writing words that you have to look up.

The way we really learn words is through seeing them in action (in reading or speech) not through searching them out in dictionaries.

I think we can generally sense in writing when someone's been hitting the thesaurus to sound literary or clever. Whilst there's nothing better than seeing an uncommonly used word that perfectly expresses a point that might have taken 2 or 3 more commonly used ones, there's nothing worse than seeing an uncommonly used word deployed even slightly wrongly. It screams 'try hard'.

If you look at a heavyweight author like Philip Roth, he may be using a lot of words aren't familiar to many of us, but there's no sense that the words he uses are unfamiliar to him. It's all a question of control.

Read widely and your vocabulary will grow organically. The right words will come naturally.

NeuroFizz · Jul 24, 2009

One of the best ways to appreciate and practice wordsmithing is to read and write poetry. It doesn't have to be polished poetry, but if ever there is a form of writing where seeking the "right" word is important and appreciated, it's in poem construction (and deconstruction).

We have an active poetry forum right here at AW. Go read some of the amazing stuff our colleagues post there. Post something yourself. Poetry isn't all flowery fluff, either. It can be just as hard-hitting or thought-provoking as any quality prose.

iwannabepublished · Jul 24, 2009

I second (or third, etc) those that have posted to read, read, read. Nothing wrong with sitting with a dictionary when reading and a thesaurus when writing. BUT use the thesaurus only to find a better word you already know. Don't use words you are not familiar with because it will make your writing sound artificial and phony. I recently purchased a Kindle and love the unexpected included dictionary. It makes looking up words easy and since I take it along when traveling, makes my suitcase that much lighter. I final note -- when you write use the fewest words you need to get your message across. A tight 78,000 word story is a lot better than a loosely written 81,000 word book. It's not the count that counts.

Rarri · Jul 24, 2009

I use thefreedictionary.com and i've found it's thesaurus very useful; a thesaurus can help expand vocabularly, but it's best use (i find) is simply to act as a reminder of vocabularly we already know. To echo everyone else though, reading is a super way to expand vocabularly.

Samantha's_Song · Jul 24, 2009

I totally agree.

To the O.P. You do know many more words than you think you do, and the meanings, but you don't often use them in your every day world. When you're writing, put your telephone voice on in your head, you'll be surprised how differently you can write if you do this, and those other words, you normally don't use, will come.

CaroGirl said:
No. Never use a word unless you know exactly what it means and how to use it. To expand your natural vocabulary, read, read and read. That is all.

QFT.

Rose English · Jul 24, 2009

I want to thank everyone who has posted their thoughts about this, you have given me many resources I hadn't considered, and much to think about.

Thanks also to Caramia, who pointed out the thread Winsome Words. Unfortunately I didn't see it sooner as it's very relevant to this discussion. It's in the AW Roundtable section. (I searched 'winsome' and it came up, I must take the trouble to look up how to do a link, sorry).

Must get off here now and write...

Caramia · Jul 24, 2009

There we go: http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148771

sunandshadow · Jul 24, 2009

Another thing which can affect whether prose feels intelligent is sentence structure.

Pepper · Jul 24, 2009

Stephen King wrote about this in his book On Writing. I can't find it right now, but I'll give you a rough idea of what he said.

If your character wants to take a dump, have him "take a dump". Don't write "Billy moved his bowels". Especially if it doesn't fit the character.

The risk of using a thesaurus is that you end up making your work seem like it's trying too hard. I can pretty quickly pick out a newbie writer by having a look to see if every sentence contains an overly fluffy thesaurus word. Check out the following two sentences:

The orange light shone through the window, bathing the room in a warm glow. Ralph wondered if perhaps he should have closed the blinds after all.

The auburn luminosity gleamed through the window, dousing the space in a temperate radiance. Ralph speculated if conceivably he ought to have closed the blinds after all.

That's an off-the-top-of-my-head example, but hopefully it shows what I mean. The storyline, characters, concepts, sentence structure..... those are the things that will make your writing intelligent. Dipping into a thesaurus constantly puts you at risk of actually muddying your meaning, instead of enhancing it.

The only time I use a thesaurus is to jog my memory. It helps me to remember words I already knew and would have used if they'd come to mind at the time. I use a thesaurus to avoid the afforementioned example of Walking Slowly instead of Trudged.

Read. Listen to words that people use in real life to describe things. Pay attention. This is how you improve your vocab. Do it deliberately, and your writing may come across as silly.

AnnaNicole · Jul 24, 2009

^ I agree sometime it doesn't matter about how exaggerated the word it but the arrangment of casual words in a sentence.
Take one of my favorite line from my story
Sometimes silence can connect two people in a way words never could.

I'm glad I didn't try to some that up in a word or two because I couldn't.

scarletpeaches · Jul 24, 2009

CaroGirl said:
No. Never use a word unless you know exactly what it means and how to use it. To expand your natural vocabulary, read, read and read. That is all.

If you'll pardon the pun...

Word.

Never try to force your vocabulary or it'll sound...forced. And false.

I despise thesauruses. Thesaurii? They teach people to use ten-dollar words when a ten-cent one would do. They make readers seem like try-hards.

Your writing voice should come naturally. Read, read, read and it will develop on its own.

mlazzer · Jul 25, 2009

Okay now, that you want to improve your vocabulary makes sense. Lots of people want that even the ones who don't want to write books. But inserting long words because otherwise your work doesn't sound intelligent... I think that maybe there is something else wrong with your work and inserting clever words won't fix it then.

Wark · Jul 25, 2009

Kitty Pryde said:
Read! and mark the pages that have words you don't know.

For a while, I kept up with words I looked up on a blogger page:

http://postagulouswords.blogspot.com/

Crap, I still don't know what half of those mean.

Edited to add: My writing always scores a third grade reading level. No big words for me.

2Wheels · Jul 25, 2009

I agree with the read, read, read philosophy, however; ya gotta read the right stuff. You need to read authors whose broad vocabs are second nature to them. If you're not sure who they are, then start with the classics - Austen, Eliot, Hardy, Collins to name but a few. That might be extreme, but get a few of them under your belt and move onto modern writers. You'll find it easier to weed the sheep from the goats that way.

NeuroFizz · Jul 25, 2009

Dressing up prose with fancy words can be like putting doilies on the arms of a fuck-worn couch. But what is considered fancy can be dependent on whether that couch is in a rat-trap studio apartment or in the drawing room of an old-money mansion. We should choose the words that are best for the particular scene in the particular story, strained through our personal writing voice. Although our voice may not vary much, our word choices can be significantly different in our various stories, or in different parts of a single story. What this means is finding the best words sometimes requires we use unusual words, and with that goal in mind, using these words is certainly not cerebral or egotistical grandstanding. Using the right (best) words means we neither dumb down nor doilie-up our writing.

And there are two things I find are much more important than read, read, read. And they are practice, practice, practice, and experiment, experiment, experiment. It's because the latter two will help us develop our own voice while the first one probably won't help much in that regard.

Improving Vocabulary

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