Words Mean Something
I know, the title to this post seems like a total no brainer. But I don't think we think about it enough.
The other day one of my kids was pressing a button on a toy that played "row, row, row, your boat" over and over. It reminded me of a time when my uncle taught me the 'big words' version that goes something like this:
As I mulled over those words I realized that although the basic concept of the song is still in tact, the words have altered the meaning.
Go ahead and look up merrily in a thesaurus, ecstatically will be one of the alternate choices, but to me ecstatically means more of a feverish excitement. Merrily intones more contentment than excitement.
Not to mention the last phrase - 'life is but a dream' brings to mind a floating kind of peace, whereas "existence is but an illusion" brings to mind a deeper question and meaning to what life is.
It made me think about the words I choose as I write. Yes, I could replace some of my words with others that sound 'smarter' but does that really convey how my character thinks and acts? Is it a word they would really use, and does it fit the tone of the book?
Words do matter, and we should be careful which choices to make for our book.
The other day one of my kids was pressing a button on a toy that played "row, row, row, your boat" over and over. It reminded me of a time when my uncle taught me the 'big words' version that goes something like this:
Propel, propel, propel, your craft
Placidly down the liquid solution
Ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, existence is but an illusion.
As I mulled over those words I realized that although the basic concept of the song is still in tact, the words have altered the meaning.
Go ahead and look up merrily in a thesaurus, ecstatically will be one of the alternate choices, but to me ecstatically means more of a feverish excitement. Merrily intones more contentment than excitement.
Not to mention the last phrase - 'life is but a dream' brings to mind a floating kind of peace, whereas "existence is but an illusion" brings to mind a deeper question and meaning to what life is.
It made me think about the words I choose as I write. Yes, I could replace some of my words with others that sound 'smarter' but does that really convey how my character thinks and acts? Is it a word they would really use, and does it fit the tone of the book?
Words do matter, and we should be careful which choices to make for our book.
Comments
"Words have meaning and names have power."
I think your example of the song is interesting. First of all, "life" and "existence" are two completely different concepts. "Dreams" are very different things from "illusions". And of course there's very little in common between a "stream" and a "liquid solution".
I think this shows very clearly that you can't abandon small words for big words. Indeed, small words are not inferior to big words, as many a college professor would like us to think. Both need to be used, depending on their meaning, in writing because there are no two words that mean precisely the same thing.
When I told a writer acquaintance that, she said 'That's what editors are for!'
BTW you may want to swing by my blog :)