In Techniques of the Selling Writer, Dwight Swain wrote "A story is words strung onto pages."
Absolutely true. To be a writer, you need to love words and to consume their origins and their meanings. The English language has words spelled the same but mean very different things. Would and wound. On meaning to harm and the other to wrap something tightly. The good thing is that if we're tuned into language we will pronounce those spelled the same words according to what the writer means.
Having a love of words means, not using unfamiliar words scattered through the mss. When a reader has to stop and find a dictionary to understand what the writer means, the reader will lose interest.
I really enjoy words and I know many I wouldn't use in my fiction since I would have to find a way to show the meaning so the reader would continue reading. Another thing I love about words is looking them up in an Entomology book I have and use very often. Another way of finding words is to find a dictionary that tells you when the word was first used and also what a word meant and changed its meaning over the years.
So study words. Have a love affair with them. You will find writing becomes easier. After all a story consists of words that paint a picture of the world you've created.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment