Working on the Quest in the Realms made me realize my vocabulary needs an upgrade. But more than that, my attitude towards words needed a shift too.
First, as a copywriter, my instinct is to be as simple and clear as possible. It's hard to sell something when the readers don't know what the words mean.
But in fiction, we have the opportunity to be precise. To use the right word at the right time. As well as using alternate words so we don't repeat ourselves too much (another problem I have but that's another blog post).
The contest
The variety of people here is tremendous, and I'm sure there is a huge diversity of vocabulary too. So the contest is to:
- share your best words with me - not random, archaic or overly scientific words (as the one in my example picture) - but good go-to words you hold in your pocket to use in just the right occasion in your stories (or blogs).
- write the word in the comments with the definition and an example usage.
- only English words please as that's all I can write in (at the moment)
I'll pick my favorite and they'll get 5 SBI shares at the payout of this post.
Here's a word from me
I remember reading a book on writing (not sure which one - might even have been On Writing!) and learning why it's important to use the right words. The example I remember is cairn. A cairn is a pile of rocks used as a landmark (also a shaggy dog) typically on mountains or trails.
Why write "I saw the pile of stones marking the trail" when you could say "I saw the cairn"?
GOOD LUCK
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