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Tip of the Week

1. The girl walked down the sidewalk.
2. The girl skipped down the sidewalk.
3. The girl sauntered down the sidewalk.
4. The girl raced down the sidewalk.
5. The girl danced down the sidewalk.

What is the difference between all these sentences? They all involve a girl traveling down a sidewalk. All of them have the same result: the girl made it to the end of the sidewalk. So, what is the difference?

The first sentence gives you information--the girl walked down the sidewalk--but it doesn't give you much else. The other sentences, however, though they have the same word count, tells you something more: they tell how the girl was walking.

They also tells you something about her mood. Whereas, in sentence #1, you may have to add an adverb (ie The girl walked down the sidewalk happily) , the rest don't need the extra word. #2 implies that she is happy. #3 may imply that she is cool or indifferent. #4 implies that she's in a hurry or running from something. #5 implies that she's weird ('cause who will be dancing on a sidewalk with no music)?

In all genres of writing, choosing words is very important. It marks the difference between an exceptional peice and a commonplace one.

So here are some tips to help you choose better words in your writing.

For Poets:

Remember "Poetry is about distillation. Don't overuse expression, repeat words, make sentences longer than they need to be, use anything that isn't absolutely, irrevocably, unequivocally necessary to the meaning."

In other words, poetry is about squeezing as much meaning as you can into as few words as possible. Imagery is essential to the poet because you are weaving words into a very (most times) short piece. Therefore, every word has to be inserted, scrutinized, studied, and tossed if it doesn't add to the meaning.

Also, if your piece rhymes, and "the first thing that occurs to you after the word 'dumb' is 'bum' DON'T USE IT. There probably is a better word somewhere in the arsenals of your vocabulary that will get you to the meaning. You've just got to search harder. Don't be lazy."

That's pretty self-explanatory.

For Other Writers:

One of the best ways to start choosing better words is to cut "as," "is," and "was" out of your pieces. Those words are easy to use and, as such, tend to be overused (*raises hand as guilty*). Many times using the right words will allow you to cut unnecessary words that may hamper the meaning of your peice.

For instance, the sentence: "She was holding the figurine" may be more interesting if you say: "She carressed the figurine."

You may have to completely rearrange a sentence in order to cut "as," "is, and "was," but in the end the time and effort will be worth it. This will also force you to find a new word that will get your meaning across. Get a good thesaurus or just use the one that comes with your word processer.

Note: There are some instances where you can't cut "as," "is," or "was." I can't think of a plausible sentence that replaces: "My name is Michelay." But the point is that we get rid of as many instances as we can.

I hope these tips will help you reach a new level in your writing. Writing is a hard business, but we do it because we love it, don't we?

*all quotes are ©1999? Laura, a Creative Writing instructor I once had.



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Don't forget: if you have a writing issue you would like addressed in an article or if you want to write one, let me know. I'm open to suggestions. Please also let me know if these tips are helping or at least interesting

I will be adding an index to these tips sometime in the near future. That way you can reference them anytime you wish.

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Star of Lunaris--the Korian Spy by Apacheman2k

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