Example: The mare shook her head territorially, but I approached her incrementally, with an air of circumspection –– I didn’t want her to gallop away superfluously. Finally I arrived at her umber side, and pulling a sugar cube out of my coat pocket, I proffered it to her on my supine palm. At a sedate pace, she inclined her sinewy neck towards my hand, and took the sugar cube into her eager orifice.
When you use a thesaurus to figure out another word for “mouth,” you’re going much, much too far. How many of you knew “umber” is a shade of brown? Or that “circumspection” means “wary”? Anyone aware of the fact that “supine” means “flat”? When you’re throwing in big words to make yourself sound smart, it doesn’t work out that way –– all the reader sees is a failed attempt to be unique. Or even worse, your big words confuse them so much they stop reading altogether. If you’re a teen writer, odds are your target audience is teens –– don’t use words your friends at school wouldn’t understand. If you’re an adult writer, it’s still the same thing: write words you already have in your vocabulary. Putting words you aren’t comfortable with in your writing hurts your voice.
And although in that example I was putting in difficult words left and right, don’t think we don’t notice when you slip in a bizarre word here and there. It’s almost worse than the constant assault, because we don’t see it coming, and all of a sudden we see the word “antidisestablishmentarianism” and our inner monologue that was just a moment ago perfectly content with reading your story goes “hold up, now –– what’s going on?”
By the way, “big words” aren’t necessarily long words; they’re words one does not use regularly in every day speech. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and if one of your characters is a fifty-year-old English professor who owns a “word-a-day” calendar and likes to smoke a pipe, I will allow you to use “big words.” But only if he likes to smoke a pipe (hardy-har). I’ll mention this again in dialogue, because it’s important. (Not the pipe, the big words.)
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Writing Mistakes You're Making
LosoweA self-help book for beginning writers, covering everything from grammar to plot with a dash of humor to keep you interested and learning! (The best part? Anything you already know, you can just skip over.)
