Thursday, March 22, 2012

Vaguely Vague

Words like nice, good, okay, fine, fast, cool, great, big, small, etc. are pretty dull, pretty vague, don't you think?

PUT SOME ENERGY INTO YOUR STORIES using words that paint a picture.

As a writer, one of my favorite things to do is to come up with the perfect word. Sometimes that word takes the place of several, and then I'm really proud of myself. For example, I recently wrote this sentence in my work-in-progress:

Timmy jumped, feet out then in, across the room.

Okay, so jumped isn't as terrible as walked or egads...went!

But I wanted to paint a picture of Timmy's weird and energetic jumping, so I changed it to this:

Timmy hopscotched across the room.

I patted myself on the scapula for that one.
(LOL. I'm getting carried away, but you see my point, right?)

The next time you write something, be your own proofreader. Take a red pen and circle the dull words. Replace them with more exciting words.

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