Quotidian, adjective: occurring every day;
commonplace, ordinary. Calling this channel “Quotidian Writer”
works twofold. First, I am a writer who strives to write,
in some form, every day—like clockwork. Second, I don’t claim to be some magical
writing guru who knows all—I’m an ordinary writer stumbling through the learning process
and trying to make my voice heard in the great void. I first learned the word “quotidian” from
Spanish—cotidiano—and fell in love with the sound of it. I didn’t even know there was an English
equivalent until much later. But that’s the beauty of language: along
our literary travels, we often encounter new words to treasure as part of our collections
like seashells at the beach. Expanding your writing vocabulary isn’t
about cramming your sentences with ten-dollar words that make you sound like a stuffy professor. It’s not about flooding your work with jargon
that only experts in a certain field can understand. And not every sentence needs to be bursting
with purple prose that brags about its beauty. It’s more about finding the right word—the
one special word in a sentence—that will transmit an image or feeling directly into
the reader’s mind. For example, the word “carapace” is a
specialized term to me. It refers to “the hard upper shell of a
turtle, crustacean, or arachnid,” and Daniel Wallace uses it in his novel Big Fish: “He’s lived his whole life like a turtle,
within an emotional carapace that makes for the perfect defense: there’s absolutely
no way in.” For those unfamiliar with the word “carapace,”
the turtle simile provides context clues: it must mean “hard outer shell.” An emotional carapace. The specificity gives the description more
weight, more energy. Not long ago, I didn’t know the color of
heather, or that sconces were a thing, or what the heck a bandolier was. Knowing the names of flowers, light fixtures,
and weaponry allows authors to deliver both precision and flair. So, let’s look at a few strategies we writers
can use to expand our word knowledge. Reading is an obvious vocabulary builder. But what do you do when you encounter an unfamiliar
word? I might rely on context clues to figure out
the probable meaning. With an eBook, I’ll use the built-in dictionary. If I’m reading a physical book and don’t
want to bother Google, I’ll likely write the word down on a Post-it Note to look up
later or skip over it entirely, if it’s not important for understanding the sentence. For me, the issue with this approach was that
most of these words were never encoded in my long-term memory. I knew it was unrealistic to memorize every
new word I encountered, so I decided to try a different tactic. I’d look up the definitions as I went along,
but I’d only write down the words I could see myself using in my own writing. Then, I’d pick the three most interesting
ones from my list, open the document with my vocabulary journal, and take the time to
really get to know those three words. My vocab journal includes the original context,
dictionary definition, etymology, usage in the news, and a practice sentence. Here’s part of my entry for the noun “vellum.” I came across it in a short story by Paolo
Bacigalupi entitled “Moriabe’s Children”: “The ink went to lovers’ notes, a syrup-sweet
filigree to the protestations of devotion that suitors spilled on vellum.” “Vellum” is defined as “fine parchment
made originally from the skin of a calf.” It originated around the 15th century and
is related to the word “veal,” or baby cow. A 2016 headline read, “Why is the UK still
printing its laws on vellum?” The answer is that vellum lasts a long time,
and it’s reported that “original copies of the Magna Carta, signed more than 800 years
ago on vellum, still exist.” This was my practice sentence: “The founders
agreed that the laws must be written on vellum so even civilizations a thousand years hence
would know the decrees of their predecessors.” At the end of the year, I reread all my practice
sentences to further cement these new words in my memory. Now, I feel more comfortable using those words
in my fiction. Flashcards are another tried-and-true method
of learning. Quizlet is a great free resource for flashcards
that can be used across their website and mobile app. You can make your own or find sets other people
have created; I recommend searching for SAT or GRE vocabulary if you plan on doing the
latter. Quizlet has a matching and testing feature
so you can practice your knowledge. Magoosh provides a set of curated GRE Vocab
Flashcards, and their Vocabulary Builder is a fun app for testing your word knowledge
through multiple choice. I’m also fond of Brainscape’s GRE Vocab
Genius app because you can rank how well you know a word on a one-to-five scale. Based on your rating, the app will make the
word appear more or less frequently until your confidence increases. You can always go old-fashioned and write
paper flashcards, which I still like to use when I want to scribble down mnemonic clues. For example, I learned the word “extemporaneous,”
meaning something that’s improvised or made up on the spot, by associating it with a word
of similar meaning: spontaneous. It’s also useful to learn English word elements,
such as Latin roots, which can help you dissect individual words to understand their meaning. Take the word “antebellum.” “Ante” means “before,” and “bellum”
denotes “war.” So, “antebellum” means “before a war,”
although it’s most often used to refer to the plantation-era South before the American
Civil War. You can then use this knowledge to better
understand words that share those elements, such as “antecedent” and “belligerent.” In the same vein as flashcards are word-a-day
notifications. Many online dictionaries have an email sign-up
where they’ll share daily definitions. The WordoftheDay app tells me a new word every
morning; it displays a very basic definition and example sentence so that I don’t get
lost in etymology or start opening new tabs left and right. Rote learning through flashcards is perhaps
the fastest way to expand your vocabulary. Sometimes, it’s not enough to memorize the
dictionary. We need to delve into specialized terminology
because the story demands that the character know how to ride a horse or that the reader
can paint the landscape based on words alone. Every hobby or field of study comes with its
own set of vocabulary. Learning that “native language” and applying
it to your stories can better convince the audience of your world’s reality. You’ll likely encounter the terms you need
to know while you’re conducting targeted research, but pay special attention to the
words your sources use in discussing the topic. Be sure you know exactly what the terms mean
and in what context to use them. For instance, I often see fiction writers
use the terms “clip” and “magazine” interchangeably when talking about guns, whereas
most people with firearm experience say there’s a distinct difference: The clip loads the
magazine, and the magazine loads the gun. It might help to make a list of the specialized
topics that will crop up in your book: Gothic architecture, rare gemstones, human anatomy,
classical music. In their techno-thriller Relic, Douglas Preston
and Lincoln Child clearly did their research to make the lab work sound believable, although
I can’t attest to the scientific accuracy myself. The descriptions are filled with terminology
that’s still understandable: “She picked up the first plant with tweezers,
slicing off the top portion of the leaf with an X-Acto knife. In a mortar and pestle, she ground it up with
a mild enzyme that would dissolve the cellulose and lyse the cells’ nuclei, releasing the
DNA.” The important takeaway here is the visual
and the purpose. We can visualize the character grinding up
the leaf for the purpose of releasing the DNA, but the added jargon demonstrates the
character’s expertise. Reading articles and books on these subjects,
talking to an expert, or even taking online or in-person classes can acquaint you with
the necessary jargon. When you understand a field’s basic vocabulary,
it’s easier to determine what search terms you need to use to learn more. After all, you don’t know what you don’t
know. Even when we build our vocabularies, we don’t
always use all the words in our arsenal, leaning more heavily on some and entirely forgetting
others. As Roy Peter Clark, author of Writing Tools,
says, “All of us possess a reading vocabulary as big as a lake but draw from a writing vocabulary
as small as a pond.” This is why I keep a word bank: a list of
verbs, adjectives, and nouns I already know the meaning of but that I don’t use often. Right now, my verb bank includes squelched,
weltered, scrabbled, and careened. For adjectives, I have gossamer, vermillion,
lurid, and blubbery. I’m less likely to write down nouns, but
my short list features promontory, regalia, cultivar, and ruffian. In addition to a word bank, I also keep a
word hit list. This not only covers annoying filler words
like “just,” “that,” and “very” I can often delete, but also personal habits
that need to be replaced—unusual words or phrases I’ve caught myself using more than
once in the same story. When a word is ingrained in our vocabulary,
it basically becomes invisible. Even though it sounds normal to the writer,
it sticks out to the reader. To me, words like “cacophony,” “maladroitly,”
and “susurrate” call attention to themselves, so if an author uses them twice within the
span of a few chapters, I’m going to notice. It’s easier to see these sore thumbs when
we’re reading another person’s writing than our own, which is yet another reason
why feedback from critique partners and editors is so valuable. All writers fall into the habit of using certain
words. In the book Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve,
author Ben Blatt analyzed what words famous authors used most frequently, which he refers
to as “cinnamon words,” named after Ray Bradbury’s tendency to use the word “cinnamon”
disproportionately more than other writers. For Agatha Christie, that list featured “inquest,”
“alibi,” and “frightful.” Toni Morrison’s cinnamon words are “messed,”
“navel,” and “slop.” Many famous authors are guilty of relying
on the same clichés across their works, with Salman Rushdie using “the last straw”
and Dan Brown “full circle” in over half their books. It’s not a bad thing to have cinnamon words,
but make sure you’re not recycling clichés when you could be finding fresh phrasing. Part of a writer’s vocabulary growth is
determining when they’re misusing words and discovering alternative definitions of
familiar words. It’s good to get in the habit of double-checking
word meanings when you’re not one-hundred-percent sure. My word choice errors often come from me assuming
I know the meaning of a word because of how it sounds. For example, I always thought “nonplussed”
meant “unbothered” or “unimpressed.” In the United States, it does hold that meaning
colloquially, so I was confused when I encountered sentences where it held almost the opposite
meaning. The original definition implies that someone
is “so surprised or confused as to be at a loss at what to say, think, or do.” Merriam-Webster includes this example from
Harry Potter: “Cedric looked nonplussed. He looked from Bagman to Harry and back again
as though sure he must have misheard what Bagman had said.” Many times, I’ll catch myself saying or
writing a word that feels right but that I’m not sure I could define. That’s when I know I need to look it up,
just to be sure. Be wary, and check the dictionary. In general, your diction should match the
character’s voice or the story’s narrative tone. If you’re writing a story with strong character
voice, especially first person, you can pay special attention to their vocabulary. If the character has an interest in nature,
their vocabulary list might include words like metamorphosis, parasite, glacial, molting,
stemmed, blossomed, and germinated. They might use figurative language that conceptualizes
the world in a way that’s familiar to them: she was like a morning glory, only opening
up when times were bright. Create a list of words or phrases that particular
character would use. When it comes to narrative tone, you can pay
attention to how your word choice changes the story’s atmosphere. Take a look at this straightforward sentence:
“The creature moved across the floor.” The word “moved” is a little plain—it
doesn’t add much to the visual. You can change the verb to convey more detail
about how the creature moved. You might say, “The creature scuttled across
the floor.” To me, that’s creepy; this is a horror story
now. You can almost hear the tapping of its numerous
legs as it runs. But say that this is a cute creature, and
you want to show that it’s endearing: “The creature bumbled across the floor.” Aww, it’s stumbling around, all awkward
and clumsy. Now it’s more of a comedy. You can replace “plain” words with ones
that give the reader more information. Again, building your vocabulary is not about
seeing how many words you can pack into a single sentence. Like Mark Twain once said, “Don't use a
five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.” Moderation is key. In fact, using only one or two stand-out words
in a sentence will generate more power. Let’s compare two examples. The first: “A blubbery woman wearing gossamer
regalia in lurid vermillion squelched toward the ruffian scrabbling for cultivars, who
then weltered and careened off the promontory.” The second: “A woman in a lurid red dress
sped toward the boy. He stumbled away from his plants and careened
off the cliff’s edge.” It’s hard to visualize or even parse the
meaning of that first sentence. In the second, the only unusual words are
“lurid” and “careened,” while the rest are quite simple, conveying the image
more directly. Avoid piling on adjectives and verbs when
you can convey the same idea with one well-chosen adjective and one well-chosen verb. I’d like to address two more quotes about
vocabulary from famous authors. Much like Mark Twain, George Orwell believed
writers should "never use a long word where a short one will do." But throughout the pages of 1984, you’ll
find words like “etiolated” and “palimpsest.” Stephen King shares a similar message in his
ever-popular book On Writing: “One of the really bad things you can do
to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe
a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in
evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who
committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed.” Yet King himself doesn’t seem to shy away
from sesquipedalian or eccentric verbiage. In Misery, he poetically compares Annie Wilkes’
expression to that of a patient in a mental asylum: “The word which defined it was catatonia,
but what frightened him had no such precise word—it was, rather, a vague comparison:
in that moment he thought that her thoughts had become much as he imagined her physical
self: solid, fibrous, unchanneled, with no places of hiatus.” Orwell and King have expansive vocabularies,
and it shows in their work. With their advice, I think what both authors
are saying is that readers can tell when a writer is trying too hard to sound “smart.” If you go against your natural tendencies,
then the flow of your writing will suffer. Play to your strengths and build your vocabulary
in a way that’s going to enhance your unique style. Writer Alex Suchman of Quora phrases it beautifully: “Rare, impressive, or sophisticated words
have to defend themselves. They have their place—capturing the perfect
shade of meaning, or hitting just the right emotional note (or lacking any simpler synonyms)—but
you should never use them to show off or prove how smart you are. If you constantly send your reader to the
dictionary it detracts from your writing and discourages them from reading more.” If you’d like to further flex your word
muscles, you can try creating a “vocab story” as a writing exercise. I’ll give you three words, and you can see
how to fit them into a one-paragraph story. Those words are “quandary,” “putrid,”
and “roil.” Having a wide vocabulary gives you more than
just the smugness that comes from knowing that “aglet” is the name for the tiny
piece of plastic at the end of a shoelace. Language can feel limited in its ability to
express thoughts, but the more words you have at your disposal, the
more opportunities you have to distill ideas into a digestible form. Fellow logophiles, what’s a new word you’ve
learned recently? Tell me where you found it and what it means
in the comments. Whatever you do, keep writing.
