31 Days of Being a Writer

Day Five

“Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.” ― Stephen King

I adore having an abundant lexicon at my disposal. But I would never write that in a blog post or in a book. I would say… I love a big vocab.

People don’t like to feel stupid. Using words that aren’t common in most people’s daily language will make them aware of how smart you are. You might think this is a good thing… but it’s not.

I’ll give you an example.

I read Gabriel’s Inferno and Gabriel’s Rapture over the summer and I loved the books. I’m obsessed with expanding my vocabulary and I read on an iPad. What that means is that when I come across a word I don’t know the exact meaning to, I’m able to highlight and get it defined with a couple taps to my screen. I even save the word to reference back to.

While I loved doing this every page or so it made me painfully aware of how smart the author, Sylvain Reynard, is and how inadequate I am. Instead of focusing on the story I would get caught up in how smart he is and I felt like an idiot sometimes.

When you’re writing, your goal for your reader is to get them wrapped up in the world you’ve created. You don’t want them thinking about the author because that draws them away from the literary world. There’s a time and a place for eloquent lexicons, but it’s not in your stories or blog posts.

You may disagree with me. Honestly, sometimes I disagree with myself on the matter. But I’ve spoken to many people who agree that big uncommon words make them feel like they are beneath the person writing them. That is going to make people not read what you have to write.

Don’t put yourself above your readers. Your readers make you who you are. Make reading easy for them or they will get discouraged.

How do you find a happy medium between being true to your love of writing and being easy-to-read?

***This post is part of a 31 Day Writing Challenge hosted by The Nester.