Words

“An editor once told me that if I didn't keep my vocabulary to 500 words I'd never make the best-seller list."—Dean Koontz in an interview with the Wall St. Journal (courtesy of literary agent Jennifer Jackson’s blog.)

“I think the stats were something like: average total vocabulary of a human adult 1200 words, average conversational vocabulary (day to day usage) 300-400 words; avg African Grey Parrot vocab maximum capacity 700 words.” –Comment from Jeff on same blog.

Hell, I should shoot right to the top then.

Cuz vocabulary ain’t my strong point. Oh, can you tell?

People that know me in the real world think my dance with the English language is fab...but then, what do they know?

I read over my new manuscript, from beginning to end, the other night. One thing was instantly clear—I need to ratchet up the language. Now, I’m not alone in this. Many authors get the rough draft done, then haul out the Thesaurus and spend hours replacing “raced” with “exploded”...”said softly” with “whispered”...and so on and so forth.

One of my favorite how-to books is Word Painting, which taught me the art of free associating to come up with more creative ways of saying things.

Example: you’ve got a situation in which your heroine is supposed to show surprise. The tried and true way of saying this is: Amy’s jaw dropped. Well, ol’ Amy’s jaw can only drop so many times in one book, right? So, let’s free associate, shall we?

Mouth
Beak (hmm)
Bird (double hmmm)

So my scene takes place on the beach with a bunch of seagulls swirling overhead. I ended up with the hero saying: “Close your mouth before a seagull mistakes you for one of its young and drops a worm down your throat.”

Okay, the prose needs a little tightening, but I thought it was better than saying Amy’s jaw dropped.

Oh, wait. This was about vocabulary....Ha, and I guess I just proved my point, right?
Sometimes, it’s not the words...it's what you do with them.