Language Expanding Resources?

Reading books.

Take in as much as you can on as wide a subject base as you can. Articles, language debates on the news, biopic movies, poetry compilations etc...

Flick through words-of-the-day on sites like Pinterest where you can find a lot at once. Read books that have a specific subject at its core, such as whaling or farming. You can learn loads through those. Google how people spoke in certain times, like the forties, or try specific areas like rural German villages. Etymology of words across the globe helps expanding your own vocabulary. Crosswords might help a bit? (I don't know, I don't do many of them!)

I read through my thesaurus a lot whenever I'm writing - I'll change one word many times until I find one that I like.

I'll third the idea of reading more, and as large a variety as possible.

I'm no writer, at least not yet.... but thanks to spending a childhood doing some pretty strange things, like reading an entire set of encyclopedia, and dictionaries, just for amusement, I can wrangle the English language fairly well. ( Even for that, I do still keep the dictionary/thesaurus page open while I write, spellcheck not always being up to par. )
Couple that with having read enough other books to fill a large room, I have an easier time than most in figuring out how to make what I put down on paper at least interesting, if not always technically correct.

And no, I don't have any formal education in writing, past the basics you get in grade school, even though I did attend college.



O.H.

cornflake said:

Reading books.

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This. Read as much as possible. Relying too much on a thesaurus isn't helpful; they don't distinguish between shades of meaning in synonyms, while just reading a lot WILL help build in a feeling for what words work best in any given place.

Read, read lots, and read again.

READ.

Literally there is no time that I'm not in the midst of reading a book. Even when I was working at startup companies in Silicon Valley and working 18+ hours a day, I would take at least a half hour to read before I went to sleep. IMO, there is nothing better to build vocabulary than reading, and you'll also pick an instinctive sense for word flow and choice, syntax, and all the other essential elements of good writing. (this is no substitute for a formal education though)

Also - READ IN YOUR CHOSEN GENRE. And, if you're planning a SciFi story read technical stuff about the astrophysics, planetary science, physics, chemistry - all the rest of it.

Like everyone else said, read (particularly books whose vocabulary is sophisticated and occasionally strains your brain), and look up words you don't know. And write them down, which will help you remember them.

Marissa D said:

Relying too much on a thesaurus isn't helpful; they don't distinguish between shades of meaning in synonyms.

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Totally agree. It's easy to spot thesaurus overload. Big words that don't quite fit the context, don't mean what the author intended. If you're unfamiliar with the word, haven't read it a hundred times and used it at least a dozen yourself, it will be obvious.

So as everyone said, keep reading.

Use the computer to copy/paste good sentences from books into a word file, at least a page a day. Re-read good sentences out of context while on crapper and before sleep. A month later the synapses are rewired
...Noting wrong with a thesaurus during an editing sweep, as long as the writer can tell what's more appropriate and what's less appropriate.

Read. Read in different genres; read fiction and nonfiction. You can't pick up new words by reading the same type of book on the same subject.

Thesauruses should be used only to find a word you already know--you shouldn't use it to find words that you don't already know and are comfortable with. If you aren't familiar with it, it will be obvious, because you'll use the wrong preposition with it, or it'll have a different connotation than you intended, or it'll just be off.

Ray Bradbury
John Steinbeck
Ursula LeGuin
John D. MacDonald
Raymond Chandler
Flannery O'Connor
Mark Twain
P.D. James
Joseph Conrad
William Faulkner
Carson McCullers
Barbara Kingsolver
Joseph Heller
Kurt Vonnegut
John Irving
James Baldwin
Stephen King
Eudora Welty
. . .

caw

Read widely. Read non-fiction as well as fiction and poetry, and magazines. Listen widely. That includes audio books and pod casts that are non-fiction.

Get a good unabridged dictionary. I'm exceedingly fond the The American Heritage Dictionary; the whole thing is available online, including audio prononciations.