Category: vocabulary

Yep. It’s that time again.

I figured I was about do to talk abut spelling, as I due every sex months or so. It’s on of those things that needs to get hammered home again ant again, because no mater how many tines I say it, their is still this huge grope of people who incest that smelling doesn’t really effect how an editor vies you’re writing. Either that or they fill back on the hole “language evolves” defense.

Now, sum of you may bee giggling or filling a bite smug rite about now. After all, hear I am gong on about you’re bad spilling habits and halt of these wards are spelled wrong. Except, you seen, they aren’t. Not won singlet thin is spilled wrong inn these too paragraphs.

Which is the point I’m trying to make.

Y’see, Timmy, spellcheckers are idiots. Forget Watson or Deep Blue, your spellcheck program can be outwitted by my three-week old nephew banging on the keyboard with his little palms. Anyone depending on their spellchecker to save them from mistakes like the thirty-five in those first two paragraphs is doomed to a lot of rejection letters.

Yup, thirty-five. Count ‘em up. Keep counting until you find them all.

Of course, this doesn’t address the real problem. A lot of people don’t just have crappy spelling, they’ve got crappy vocabularies, too. When the idiot spellcheck suggests a word, these folks blindly accept it because they don’t really know which word they wanted in the first place. Which, if you think about it, is a bit like two homeless guys giving each other advice on the stock market.

So, let’s have a pop quiz. Pencils out, grab that spare Netflix envelope off the television, and let’s begin.

vicious or viscous — One of these words applies to wolverines.

cords or chords – One of these words deals with electronics.

sheer or shear — One of these words means see-through.

very or vary – One of these words means to change.

yore or your – One of these words applies to the past.

peak, peek, or pique — One of these words means the top.

discrete or discreet — One of these words applies to manners.

it’s or its – One (and only one) of these words is possessive.

corporeal or corpulent – One of these words means solid.

their, there, or they’re – One of these words is also a possessive.

trusty or trustee – One of these words is a person’s title.

canon or cannon — One of these is a big gun.

reign, rein, or rain – One of these words deals with emperors.

compliment or complement – One of these words means that things work well together.

So, got all your answers? Are you ready to grade this little test?

Well, here’s the catch. You’ll notice I never said what you were supposed to do. If you managed to pick the right words, that’s only part of the quiz.

You need to know all the words, what they mean, and how to use them correctly. Every single one of them. Knowing one out of three or even half of them doesn’t cut it because every one of those words is going to breeze past your spell check program without a problem– no matter which word you meant to write.

Bonus questions. Which one of the above words is a verb that means to cut? Which one’s an adjective that means thick? How about the musical noun? Which one of those words is best applied to a pile of books?

None of these should be hard questions. Seriously. These aren’t obscure words.

As I’ve mentioned before, there are lots of people who will try to convince everyone that the words you use and how you spell them does not matter in real writing. Spelling is all arbitrary, anyway, right? Such pedestrian things should be the very least of your worries.

There also a lot of people who fall back on the “language evolves,” excuse, as I brought up at the start. Modern English is not the same as Middle English or Old English. They also like to bring up Shakespeare as an example of someone who made up words that are now in common use today. Going with today’s theme of knowing what words mean, let me point out that ignorance is not a synonym for evolution.

Now, there are also lots and lots of people who have never been published, produced, or made the first cut in a writing contest. By an astonishing coincidence, a very large percentage of this group is made up of members of those first two groups.

What are the odds of that, I wonder…?

Y’see, Timmy, I know what all those words up there mean. Each and every one of them. So do most editors. Which means we will know when they’re used incorrectly, and each one’s another check mark in the “this writer doesn’t know what they’re doing” column.

How many checks do you think you’ll get before your manuscript ends up in that big pile on the left?

Stop asking your computer to write. Go buy a dictionary. Use it.

Next time, as I have a few times before, I’d like to look at one of the seminal influences of my childhood and where–in my opinion–it went horribly wrong. Even though I somehow managed to turn out okay.

Well, more or less.

Until then, go right.

I would love to tell you I’m late with this post because I’ve been getting ready for one of my oldest friend’s wedding tomorrow back here in New England. John and Holly are finally getting hitched.

Or I’d be thrilled to say this is late because I’m having such a wild time at Horror Realm 2010 promoting Ex-Heroes and/ or The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe. This place rocks.

Yep. I would love to tell you either of those things.

Moving on.

I’d like to do a little math trick for you. You’ve seen these before, right? Start here, add this, multiply that, and I predict your answer. Sound familiar?

Let me give you another example. Divide 8 by 5. Add 3. This should give you the famous answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything.

Wait, division’s the one where you make that many more of something, right? That’s multiplication? Sorry. Okay, let’s try it again.

Multiply 8 by 5. Add 3. Now you should have it, and it’s also one of the mystic numbers from LOST.

Still no?

Did I type 3? I meant to hit 2. Well, no big deal on that one. You got it from context, right?

Of course, it is a big deal, isn’t it? Screwing up numbers can have dire consequences. Misunderstand a term or toss in the wrong digit and suddenly the door doesn’t fit right on your jumbo jet. Chase hikes your interest rate by 23% or more. Your space probe misses the planet Venus and goes flying off into deep space. Yes, if it’s in a key place just one digit off could mean you miss a whole planet. Or worse yet… don’t miss it.

Granted, there’s always that brave scientist who strikes out on his own without checking his work or having anyone else go over their ideas. A whole slew of movies were made about such men back in the ‘50s. We’ve all read stories, fictional and true, about the people who didn’t double check their math, and most of these stories end in tragedy. Heck, all you need to look at the financial section of your paper to see what happens when bankers don’t pay attention to what’s actually on the page in front of them.

This is why you always hear about scientists, engineers, and bankers checking and rechecking and re-rechecking their figures. Then they hand those numbers and equations off to a colleague for him or her to check and recheck them. Finally, once their work’s been confirmed, they’ll talk about building a new plane or flying to another planet. Not knowing your numbers and sums means you don’t really have a hope of succeeding in one of these fields. You might be able to manage something small, but the big jobs are always going to end up going to the people who can just do this stuff, not the ones who are completely dependent on their calculators to do every single calculation for them.

Of course, this isn’t just true of numbers. Messing up a word or a letter can have dire consequences, too. Especially for writers.

Just as a scientist or engineer is expected to know their numbers so they can make something solid, a writer is expected to know spelling and definitions to make something worth reading. This is why I stress spelling and vocabulary here again and again and again. Hands down, the most common flaw in amateur manuscripts is misspelled and misused words.

I mentioned calculators before and, well, it was a calculated choice. I’m sure a few folks are already in the comments section pointing out that most scientists–even the very top cream-of-the-crop ones– do use calculators. They use them all the time. And they do, I’d be a fool to argue the point.

So how, you ask, is that any different from the people who depend on the spell-checker to do it all for them?

Y’see, Timmy, the difference is that the scientists are just using calculators as a time-saver. They know how to plug in all the formulas, how to work the equations, and how to do the math. If you ever sat in on a college physics class, this is why all those equations get put up on the board. These folks can do the problem out by hand on three or four sheets of paper… or they can punch the numbers in and get the answer.

This is not the same thing as the would-be writer who doesn’t know the difference between its and it’s or there and their and they’re or something bigger like corporeal and corpulent. If a writer is misusing these words it’s not that they’re saving time with spellchecker–they want spellchecker to know these things for them.

I’ve mentioned this several times before, but I’ll say it again. Buy a dictionary. There’s one or two nice big ones on the carousel at the bottom of this page. Stop depending on your spell-checker and make a point of looking up a word if you’re not sure how it’s spelled or what it means. Odds are you’ll never have to look up that word again, and you’ll remember whatever it was that made you trip up on the spelling.

If nothing else, you’ll impress friends with that big, solid book on your desk.

Next time, I’m going to rant about your friends and family. Really.

Until then… do the math. Go write.

Either my latest rants have been pure gold no one can argue with or a lot of you really hated me using LOST as an extended example. Haven’t seen any comments in weeks.

Speaking of things you don’t see, this rant’s title is another one of those clever pop culture references. Anyone remember it?

Okay, fine, I’ll explain.

“To See The Invisible Man” is the title of a Twilight Zone episode adapted by Stephen Barnes from an old Robert Silverberg short story. It’s not one of the classic Zones, but one of the newer ones when the show was revived in the mid-‘80s. It’s the tale of a man in a somewhat-utopian society who is sentenced to a year of “public invisibility” because of his selfish, antisocial behavior. He isn’t actually turned invisible, however. He just gets a small brand on his forehead which tells everyone to ignore him. That’s the curse of it. They really can see and hear and feel him–and he knows they can– but no one will react to him. Even when he desperately wants and needs to be acknowledged (there’s an eerie scene in a hospital emergency room), people pretend he’s not there. As we find out later in the story, seeing an invisible person is a major crime.

In a way, this serves as a clever little metaphor for being a writer. The reader knows the writer is there, that you’ve crafted and shaped these words on the page, but they don’t want to admit you’re leaning over their shoulder. They just want to go on their merry way and pretend they’re alone with the book. As such, the worst thing the writer can do is draw attention to themselves.

For many would be writers, the temptation is to embellish the pixilated page with an exuberant flourish of verbiage which exhibits not only the vocabulary we’re capable of as proficient anecdotists (far above any paltry amanuensis), but also how we can bend grammar to our will; the elaborate and subtle metaphors we can craft; and the clever intricacies we can interweave betwixt the threads of character, plot, and theme.

For the record, it took me almost fifteen minutes to craft that impenetrable sentence. Yes, it looks like a paragraph but it’s just one sentence. A long, sprawling sentence that really tempted you to skim, didn’t it? Heck, let’s be honest. I bet after tripping over your second or third obscure word, at least half of you started skimming, didn’t you?

Y’see, Timmy, every time we make the reader hesitate or pause just for a second, we’re breaking the flow of the story. We’re encouraging them to skim at best, put the manuscript down at worst. The reader should forget they’re paging through the latest Wakko Warner novel or screenplay, perhaps even forget they’re reading a written work altogether. This happens, odd as it sounds, when they forget they’re reading. And the easiest way to make that happen is for them not to see the writing. It’s tempting to wave our arms and shout and try to get the reader to admit they can see us, but all this does is ruin things for everyone. It’s like Sherlock Holmes showing how he came to his amazing deductions or a magician explaining their greatest illusion. That moment is when the whole thing falls apart.

As writers, we need to be invisible. Oh, we want our characters to be seen. We want our dialogue to be heard. We want our action and passion and suspense to leave people breathless. But we are just distractions. If you think about it, who’s the more impressive tough guy– the one who commits unimaginable acts of violence, or the one who doesn’t have to commit those acts? Being able to restrain yourself is just as impressive as how excessive you can be. Less of us is more of the story.

Here’s a few simple ways to keep your literary head down.

Vocabulary— We all know what bright means, but effulgent can make us pause for a moment. That guy can be bald or he can be glabrous. Some sneakers are black with a bit of red and some are atrementous tinged with titian.

A huge problem I see is writers with ego problems. They think they’re cleverer than anyone else, and they’re determined to prove it. More often than not, the writer latches onto (or looks up) obscure and flowery words because they didn’t want to use something “common” in their literary masterpiece. These folks write sprawling, impenetrable prose that makes it sound like they spend their free time wanking off to a thesaurus. All too often they’ll try to defend this wheelbarrow of wordplay by saying it’s the reader’s fault for having such a limited vocabulary. After all, everyone knows what it means if I say I’m going to cast a bantam gallet towards an embrasure, right?

Any word a writer chooses just to draw attention, to prove they don’t need to use a common word, is the wrong word. Any word that makes the reader stop reading and start analyzing is the wrong word. Period. You can try to justify your word choice any way you like, but absolutely no one is picking up your book or looking at your screenplay hoping for a vocabulary lesson. When the reader can’t figure out what’s being said for the fourth or fifth time and decides to toss that manuscript in the big pile on the left… there’s only one person to blame.

(It’s not them, in case you had any lingering thoughts on the matter)

(By the way, it just means I’m going to throw a small stone at a window)

Structure— Like obscure vocabulary, convoluted sentence structure is often the sign of a writer’s ego. One of the most common ways this manifests is to insist on grammatical and structural perfection. This often mean a rigid, formal text and very stiff dialogue. These writers are so insistent on proving they know the correct way to write that their words come across as forced and artificial.

The second most common is needless complication. If something can be described in five words, these writers will manage to do it in thirty, and I guarantee at least half a dozen of those words you’ll have to stop and look up (see above). This is where you find folks that use phrases like “seemed to be” or “appeared to be.” Some of these storytellers also go the non-linear route, even though nothing in their story gets improved by this pointless scrambling.

All of this can be an instant killer in screenplays, because most professional readers won’t put up with it. Your writing needs to be clean, simple, and natural. If there isn’t an in-story reason for it to be overcomplicated, it shouldn’t be.

Said— People will never notice if you use said. Said is invisible. What they notice is when your characters respond, retort, exclaim, pontificate, depose, demand, muse, mutter, sneer, shout, snarl, growl, whimper, whisper, hiss, yelp, exclaim, or ejaculate. Yes, stop giggling, it was a common dialogue descriptor for many years. Once you’ve got three or four characters doing all this (instead of just saying things) you shouldn’t be surprised if your audience stops reading to shrug or snicker. Usually while they’re pointing at you.

Granted, there are times where characters are shouting or whispering or hissing. Overall, though, they’re just going to be saying things. So don’t overcomplicate things and draw attention to yourself.

Names. If used in moderation, names are invisible. They’re just shorthand for the mental image of a character. It’s also worth mentioning that simpler, more common names blend into your writing easier than rare or unnatural ones. A reader can glide past Tony but might stumble a bit on Antonio. Edward is easier on the frontal lobe than Ezekiel, and they’re all nothing compared to Bannakaffalatta.

It’s worth mentioning a little note there for the genre folks. When writing sci-fi or fantasy, many fledgling writers feel the need to rename everything. The characters have all-new, created-for-this-world names. So do their pets. And their gods. And their elements. And their system of weights and measures. Off the top of my head, I would say 90% or this is a waste of time and a distraction. Your elaborate fantasy world will not collapse if the giant, fire-breathing lizards are called dragons, but it might if you insist on calling them pyroreptillicans.

A good rule of thumb–when you’ve made up a name like Grothnixyettiq for one of your characters (or their mode of transport, or their homeland, or the way they measure distance), take a moment and try to say it out loud. Note how long it takes you to figure out how to say it. Now email or text it to a friend, give them a call, and ask them to say it out loud. No hints or clues. Just ask them to say that word you wrote. If their pronunciation doesn’t match yours, you should really use a simpler word.

Always remember that moderation is key. If any name repeats too often, it begins to get cumbersome. Even a simple name like Dot can stack up. When I see a paragraph about Dot reading Dot’s book out by Dot’s pool shortly before Dot decided it was too hot outside and Dot went in where it was air conditioned… well, personally at that point I start counting them. Which means I’m not reading the story, I’m auditing it.

This is why we have…

Pronouns. When proper names start to stack up, we switch to the pronoun. Just like names are shorthand for story elements, pronouns are shorthand for those names. When nouns start to clutter up your writing, they’re there to leap in and shoulder the weight. It’s how Yakko becomes he, that mysterious island becomes there, and the Cerberus Battle Armor System becomes it.

The catch here is to make sure your pronouns are clear, because the moment someone gets confused about which it you’re referring to, they’ve just stopped reading your story and started studying the page. A good rule of thumb—after you’ve referred to Dot as she half a dozen or so times, drop her name back in once. It’s been long enough it won’t look repetitive, and it’s a gentle reminder of who she is.

And there they are. A few simple ways to stay invisible.

Next week, just for whatever budding screenwriters happen to stumble across this site on a regular basis, a few notes on drafting. In the construction sense.

Until then, don’t let me see you writing.

Several months back a friend of mine was celebrating her birthday in the usual way (with too much alcohol and far too much karaoke) and I got to catch up with a couple of friends I haven’t seen in ages. Contrary to everything Castle has taught us, most working writers don’t have tons of free time, and as such I’m lucky if I get out socially once every two months or so.

We were batting around random stories about the film industry and one of my friends made a comment about last year’s WGA Strike (you may have heard about it). Maybe it was the booze, maybe it was Laura belting out Cake’s “Short Skirt/ Long Jacket” up on stage, or maybe it was just a poorly-emphasized word. Needless to say, I heard an insult and I snapped back a sharp defense of the writers and the strike.

My friend threw up his hands. “Dude,” said he, “you totally took that the wrong way. That is not what I meant.” Yes, he actually said dude.

I looked back over his chosen words, realized the good-natured joke he’d tried to make, and shamefacedly bought the next round as an apology for verbally leaping at him.

The lesson here is twofold. One, always make sure you can afford to buy a round if you go out with friends. Two, if it’s that easy to misinterpret someone’s words in person, face to face, imagine how easy it is to do on the page.

Getting misunderstood is sort of the core flaw of all bad writing. I thought this character looked smart, you think he looks like an idiot. I consider this bit action-packed, you consider it to be chaotic. I felt like the message was clear, you found it to be a muddled mess. Part of this is an empathy issue, but often it’s just a matter of clumsy writing.

Here are a few easy things to check on in your own work to make sure the reader is thinking the same thing you are. Or at least, what you want them to be thinking…

Spelling – I know, I know. I never give up on the spelling Probably because it’s the most common problem I see. I’m not talking about random typos, but words people have just plain spelled wrong or used incorrectly. Know the difference between plane and plain, their and there, corporeal and corpulent. You don’t want your mad scientist to unleash a deadly plaque upon the world, one that will cause mass history.

Alas, there is only one way to beat this. Shut off your spell-checker, pick up a dictionary, and learn how to spell all these words you’re using. Sorry.

Grammar – The British comedian Benny Hill (best known in the US as that late-night guy with the awe-inspiring Hill’s Angels) had a recurring skit about actors who muddled their lines because of an unpunctuated script. Usually they’d end up delivering such zingers as “What’s that up in the road–a head?” or the beautiful woman who asks her partner “What is this thing called, love?” One of my personal favorites as of late was a dedication that read “This book is for my parents, Ayn Rand and God.”

Commas, capitalization, verb-noun agreement– none of these were made up because editors had nothing better to do one afternoon. They make sure a reader knows precisely what the writer means. Which is why the writer needs to know precisely how to use them. Remember, it doesn’t matter if it makes sense to you. It needs to make sense to an absolute stranger looking at it for the first time.

Common knowledge – One frustrating thing most of us have probably encountered (I know I have) is when a term comes up in a story that the characters all understand but we, the readers, don’t. It could be a joke, a reference, or maybe even a key plot element. Point is, if the reader doesn’t know what the writer’s referring to, it’s just a stumbling block that will knock them out of the story.

If you’re using a term for a certain effect, make sure it’s a term most people know so it can achieve that effect. If I’m told “she’s as mean as a Catachan puffball,” does that mean she’s vicious or is it sarcasm? How many times can my characters refer mysteriously to “Omega” before the reader decides to fold laundry or make lunch? Before you answer, consider this– we’re barely twenty minutes into The Matrix when Morpheus begins to explain the mystery of what the Matrix is.

Sarcasm – We all know sarcasm. As mentioned above, it’s when someone says one thing but means another– sometimes the exact opposite. This can go wrong in real life, so on the page it can be a killer. It can be especially rough in screenplays, which are often so stripped-down that the reader has to make up a lot of the context on their own. If sarcasm is read wrong on the page, it can send the reader down a false path, and once they realize they’re on a false path… well, there’s that large pile on the left.

Be careful using sarcasm too soon in a story. Make sure the reader knows the characters before you risk confusing them.

Language barrier – I mentioned this a while back as a common script problem, but it happens in prose as well. Even when two countries have a shared language, there are colloquial terms that vary. Boot, bonnet, pasties, Macintosh, rubber– all these words mean one thing in the UK and something very different in the US.

Know who your readers are and make sure you’ve adjusted your vocabulary appropriately. Through the wonders of social networks and message boards, most of us know at least one person in another country. If you know someone who’s part of your target audience, ask them to take a look at your writing.

Double meanings – This one’s kind of close to the language barrier. There are a lot of words and phrases that can mean one thing in one context, but something entirely different in another. Which means when there’s not much context, they became dangerously vague. When my boss tells me she’s got an opening that needs to be filled, is she hitting on me or asking if I know anyone who’s not working? What if I see a couple birds twittering in a tree? Are they making noises or social networking? Is that antique ring something wicked (uber cool) or something wicked (pure evil)?

This ties back to vocabulary (which ties back to spelling). A writer has to know what a word means, and also what it could mean. If not, there will be more confusion. And that path leads to pain, suffering, and laundry.

So, there are six quick tips that might help achieve a bit more clarity in your writing. Or at least make sure it’s muddled in all the right places.

Next time I’d like to talk about going from A to B. Or from B to A. You can go both ways, really. We don’t judge here.

Until then, you need to go write. Clearly.