{"id":13394,"date":"2014-03-17T18:12:55","date_gmt":"2014-03-17T18:12:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2014\/03\/17\/the-strength-of-common-words\/"},"modified":"2014-03-17T18:12:55","modified_gmt":"2014-03-17T18:12:55","slug":"the-strength-of-common-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2014\/03\/17\/the-strength-of-common-words\/","title":{"rendered":"The Strength of Common Words"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/thereddestpen.tumblr.com\/post\/79295241055\/the-strength-of-common-words\">thereddestpen<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u00a0\u201cPoor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?\u201d\u2014Ernest Hemingway.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>The thesaurus<\/strong> is bad for your writing. The only acceptable use for the thesaurus for a writer is to recall that word that you know is exactly what you want, but can\u2019t quite remember. Even in these cases, you should only draw on the thesaurus in matters of extreme importance, otherwise if you can\u2019t quite remember the word that means the same thing as \u201cenergetic,\u201d for instance, just put down \u201cenergetic\u201d and move on. When you read back over your work you\u2019ll find it didn\u2019t really matter anyway; \u201cenergetic\u201d plays just fine.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m disappointed every time I see a vocabulary post on all the different and better ways to say \u201c<strong>happy<\/strong>\u201d or \u201c<strong>angry<\/strong>\u201dor \u201c<strong>sad<\/strong>.\u201d I understand being excited by language\u2014I feel it myself and encourage it in others\u2014but nothing says <strong>happy <\/strong>quite like the word itself, or perhaps better yet, a smile or a laugh or an arm thrown around someone\u2019s shoulders.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Context <\/strong>communicates a great deal. One of the remarkable aspects of writing is that the <strong>total effect<\/strong> of a story, a scene, or even a thought, is greater than the collection of words that make it up. Big, ten-dollar words tend to keep me at arm\u2019s length from a story. Sure, I may enjoy the language for its own sake, but I won\u2019t feel close to any of the characters because the language draws too much attention to itself and distracts from the story. \u00a0Maybe you\u2019ve felt that some.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>(<a href=\"http:\/\/thereddestpen.blogspot.com\/2014\/03\/the-strength-of-common-words.html\">read more<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>thereddestpen: \u00a0\u201cPoor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?\u201d\u2014Ernest Hemingway. The thesaurus is bad for your writing. The only acceptable use for the thesaurus for a writer is to recall that word that you know is exactly what you want, but can\u2019t quite remember. Even in these cases, you should only &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2014\/03\/17\/the-strength-of-common-words\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Strength of Common Words<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[135],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13394"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13394\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}