We writers like to hoard things, don’t we? Sometimes these things are heavy–like that hundred-pound marble-topped coffee table in the shape of a Space Invader I once took off my buddy Michelangelo (no joke, that’s his name. His brother’s name. . . ready? Bob).
Sometimes, though, these things we hoard are light, airy. These one, two sheets of paper may not seem like much, but they can show us new life.
Take my most recent find: a Writer’s Digest article, “4 Tips for Choosing the Right Word.”
Tips are culled from William Brohaugh, long-time editor and reference book writer (English Through the Ages). Read in tandem with another something I’ll be hanging onto–Skip Horack’s new Bakeless Prize-winning debut collection, The Southern Cross—these four tips from old-timer editor Brohaugh shine like bright copper pennies:
1. Keep word and phrase choice appropriate to the context. For example, streetwise characters in a novel wouldn’t likely use technical jargon or acronyms. Nor would the writer of a novel about streetwise characters. One lesson here is to let word choice in the narrative conform at a certain level to the word choice of the people populating the narrative. For instance, formal narration lacking contractions wouldn’t serve a story about rural folk, nor would colloquial narration serve a story about high society — even if the characters themselves spoke completely in context.
2. Listen for what sounds right. I’m thinking of the TV mini-series Merlin, in which a medieval character states, “My mind is made up.” I don’t have reference to when the idiom “make up your mind” was first used, but I suspect it wasn’t in use in Arthurian times, and even if it was, it sounds modern. Better the character have said something that sounded a bit archaic, like “My mind is firm.”
3. The precise word isn’t necessarily the right word. Susurration might be more precise than murmur in a given passage, but if the word is confusing or (see above) at odds with the context or the atmosphere of the story, a less-precise word might actually be the better choice.
4. The most powerful words tend to be the shortest and, not coincidentally, the ones most basic to the English language. Said Sir Winston Churchill, “Broadly speaking, the short words are best, and the old words best of all.” Words like kin, thanks, and small, for instance, are deeply rooted in Old English before A.D. 1000, while words like relatives (from the 1600s), gratitude (in use by 1450) and tiny (from the 1500s) are from succeeding generations. But again, it’s best to choose the word that communicates your point while evoking or echoing the tone of your manuscript, and if it’s the longer word, so be it.
Here’s a paragraph from one of Horack’s sixteen stories, a 1-and-1/2-page marvel called “Chores”:
Easy finished with the front and began cutting behind the trailer. A thick patch of ragweed grew along the back fence. Here, he busted a pair of quail that exploded across the hay field. They separated then disappeared into the pinewoods, and Easy tracked them, wincing as he imagined a clutch of eggs passing through the blade of his mower.
Horack’s prose holds up impeccably in the light of Brohaugh’s tips. The word choice is spot-on and the construction flawless. I would love to come up with another word for “clutch” in his paragraph. I can’t. It’s perfect. No other word could do as much work. Not “clench.” Certainly not “pile.” And it would be a sin to remove the word entirely and simply say “the eggs.”
By the way, The Southern Cross is a brilliant, heartbreaking collection you should really pick up soon.
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