A jewelled missile

One of the simplest insights in writing is that words matter.

That sounds so perilously obvious that I ought to scurry away from it and come up with something a little more rewarding. Maybe a list of 100 Fancy Words that everyone ought to use more.

Inimical
Crepuscular
Ullulate
Chiasmus
Arboreal
Sussuration
Ductile
Canticle
Colostomy

But – y’know – that kind of approach to writing mostly leads to unreadable rubbish. I’ve published over two million words in my career. I’ve probably used the word inimical from that list. Maybe ductile. Certainly canticle. I seriously doubt if I’ve used the others without a kind of ‘Oooh, look at me’ glitter in my eye when I did.

The fact is that the vocabulary that you have – that you are genuinely master of – is almost certainly sufficient. You just have to use the right damn word.

What’s more, the vocabulary you already have is a place of treasure. It is richer and brighter and with more movement and dazzle than you realise. But you probably aren’t using it. You are, quite likely, drawing from the easy first five thousand words, the ones you use all the time, every day, week in, week out. But native English-speakers typically have a comfortable range of 20-35,000 words. Those aren’t words you use all the time, yet they’re words that you can deploy perfectly easily when the need arises. (See the PSes for a brilliant website where you can test your vocab.)

Here’s what I mean:

How often in a year do I use the word cockle? Answer, very seldom. But when my older girl came home with a cockle shell she’d found somewhere, I knew what to call it. When my older boy was recently diagnosed with possible appendicitis, I knew perfectly well what the doctor meant, even though I might not have used the word once in the five years beforehand.

So you have a broad vocabulary of words you understand perfectly well. But do you use them, my friend? That’s the whole soul and purpose of this email. Do you use the words you have?

Right now, you can do this for me. And I mean RIGHT NOW THIS MINUTE, YOU LAZY DONKEY.

Open up your current manuscript and bring up a random page. Not one with too much dialogue, but apart from that, any page you like.

And ask yourself: are the words you use interesting or boring?

Specifically, do your words feel like they’re all drawn from the Dull Five Thousand? Or the glittering parades that beyond those plodding, quotidian footsoldiers?

So here’s a sentence made up of the Dull Five Thousand:

A bird had somehow got into the room and, unable to find a way out, flapped feebly at the windows.

Here’s a sentence that draws richly from the glittering parades:

There was the ballroom, gleaming and empty, where once – in the chill of late autumn – Alma had encountered a trapped hummingbird, which had shot past her ear in the most remarkable trajectory (a jewelled missile, it seemed, fired from a tiny cannon.)

This second sentence (from Elizabeth Gilbert’s brilliant The Signature of All Things) doesn’t use any fancy vocab in the sussuration sense of fancy. But – ballroom, encountered, hummingbird, trajectory, jewelled, missile, cannon – it draws happily and broadly and precisely from our thirty-thousand word storeroom and creates treasure on the page.

And you can do the same. You know the word cannon. And ballroom. And trajectory. And jewelled. Those words aren’t even hard or obscure. They don’t live at the outer reaches of your vocabulary. They are yours to use.

If you look at your manuscript and find your language feels a little dull, then pay close attention to the nouns especially. The dumb way to enrich your work is to take a boring sentence and shove it full of la-di-da adjectives, with one or two ridiculous verbs thrown in for good measure:

A pulchritudinous bird had somehow inveigled its way into the grandiloquent room and, unable to find a manner of egress, flapped disconsolately at the unfortunately glazed windows.

If you anchor your sentence with some excellent nouns (ballroom, autumn, hummingbird, trajectory, missile, cannon), the rest of the sentence kind of falls into place. You can use adjectives from the Solid Five Thousand (empty, late, tiny) and the sentence does fine. You can throw in some slightly more splendiferous items too (gleaming, trapped, jewelled) and the sentence remains beautifully balanced.

Pay attention to the nouns first. The rest is easy.

That’s it from me. Go and burrow in the PSes, though. There lie riches