Category Archives: Words

Every Word’s a Choice – Part 8: Adverbs – Do you Need Them?

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“Adverbs are the tool of the lazy writer.”                                                                        Mark Twain

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” 
Stephen King            

The liberal use of adverbs, the telltale “-ly” words, especially has drifted out of fashion, in favor of more direct prose. It’s obvious what King and Twain thought of them. The death knell may have come some decades ago with the Tom Swifty. You may remember these awful puns: “I’ll have a martini,” Tom said drily. Or “I know who turned off the lights,” Tom said darkly. Or “I always eat at McDonald’s,” Tom said archly. At the height of their popularity, it was hard to hear an -ly adverb without thinking of the line that could introduce it, she wrote promptly. An occasional adverb, like an occasional pun is fine, it’s overuse that you want to avoid.

Many times, you can avoid the adverb problem by selecting a more robust verb, as in these pairs of examples. The first uses an adverb, the second a more colorful verb.

“Get off your duff and bring me that report,” the captain said angrily.
“Get off your duff and bring me that report,” the captain growled.

“Come over here and sit by me,” she said flirtatiously.
“Come over here and sit by me,” she flirted.

Which approach you use depends on your writing style and voice, but if you find yourself falling back on them to make your meaning clear, give your verbs a hard look.

Order, Please!

The previous post in this series talked about the little known yet widely followed English-language rule about the order in which adjectives are presented. Where to put adverbs in a sentence is a little trickier. Their position is less fixed. Adverbs are usually but not always put near the verb (or before the adjective) they modify.

For example, in these sentences, the adverbs barely, terribly, and wildly modify—that is, they change and in this case make more precise or intensify—the adjectives “plausible, hot, and inappropriate.”

Barely plausible alibi
Terribly hot day
Wildly inappropriate behavior

Careful placement of adverbs avoids vagueness in your writing. Some modifiers—“only” and “just” are prime examples—can function as either adverbs or adjectives and, as adverbs, they are often rather haphazardly placed. Keep in mind that they are modifiers, and need to be near whatever they are modifying. When you change their position, the literal meaning of your sentences actually slightly shifts. To avoid ambiguity, these words must be in the position that most accurately conveys your intention. You know what you mean, so you have to be extra-conscious of what you’re actually saying. It’s a habit worth developing.

A careful writer pays attention to these tiny differences in meaning. Here’s another example where moving the adverb affects the meaning

“Heck, I don’t even know the backstory.” (It’s a mystery to me)
“Heck, even I don’t know the backstory.” (And I’m usually in-the-know)
“Heck, I don’t know even the backstory.” (And there’s so much more to it)

The emphasis in the first version is on know. In the second example, the emphasis is on I, and in the third example, it’s on backstory.

“Just” And “Only” Trip Everyone Up

Sometimes placement is critical. Here’s an example from a literary magazine request for submissions (and tut-tut to them):

“We are only open in March for underrepresented voices; the window for general submissions (from all writers) is closed.”

What the editors probably mean is that they want submissions from authors who are members of underrepresented groups and no one else in March, but what they are saying is that those groups are welcome to submit in March and not at other times. The sentence probably should have read:

“We are open in March only for underrepresented voices; the window for general submissions (from all writers) is closed.”

More examples. Note the differences. What the sentence is implying is in italics.

She watched to make sure he only delivered the salad (and didn’t spill it in the customer’s lap or make disparaging comments about it. He only delivered it.).
He just wanted her to pay the check (not lecture him about his love life)

In conversation, this last kind of construction is used when the speaker is sort of apologetic about the ask. Kind of a “Gee I didn’t think this would be such a big deal. All I wanted was for her to pick up the check.” But it is ambiguous when we are reading and not hearing the speaker’s tone of voice.

What is the proper place for “only”  in this sentence? “I believed he was innocent of the burglary.”

Ahhh. Trick question. You cannot answer it unless you know what the sentence is intended to mean. Think about the differences:

Only I believed Jake was innocent of the burglary (everyone else believed he was guilty)
I only believed Jake was innocent of the burglary (I couldn’t prove it)
I believed only Jake was innocent of the burglary (and the rest were guilty)
I believed Jake was only innocent of the burglary (but not the b&e)

While a few of the differences in meaning might appear a bit subtle, and while you may think they don’t much matter, rest assured, they matter a great deal to Jake.

Part 9: Have some style!

For previous posts in this series, check the “Writers’ First Draft” tab on my website home page: www.vweisfeld.com.

Every Word’s a Choice — Part 7 — Word Order

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A famous story about James Joyce recounts how, after a day’s work, he told a friend he’d produced two sentences. The friend asked, “You’ve been seeking the right words?”
“No,” replied Joyce, “I have the words already. What I’m seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentences I have.”

This series of posts is about how to choose the most effective words to tell your story, and what to keep in mind as you make those choices.

Now we’ll talk about how you arrange those word—the order you put them in. The technical term for word order is syntax. English (and many other languages) usually organize the parts of a sentence with subject first, then verb, then object. No matter how baroquely convoluted a sentence becomes, how many phrases and predicates it includes, it usually follows a subject-verb-object order, as follows.
Jack ate the chicken (SVO)–not
The chicken ate Jack (OVS)
Ate Jack the chicken (VSO)
Jack the chicken ate (SOV)

This conventional order of sentence parts is something we absorb without thinking about it. Disrupting that order stands out and is called hyperbaton. It can give a pleasing break in the rhythm of the prose. Or it can be confusing. Sometimes, verb and subject are switched for poetic effect. For example: “Softly blows the nighttime breeze.” And, you can occasionally present words out of their accustomed order, for emphasis. Shakespeare did. You may have guessed that hyperbaton is a device to be used sparingly—and carefully. Where you’re likely to encounter it is in dialog for characters who are not native English speakers. In that usage, it immediately signals the person’s foreign origins. But, for most of my writing, as my Lithuanian manicurist would say, “I was not there going.”

Like subjects, verbs, and objects, when you use a string of adjectives, they have a conventional order too. When we violate that convention we may change the meaning or at the very least prompt a “Huh?” on the part of our reader. We don’t usually think about this. We don’t need to. The right order is ingrained.

Test yourself. Here’s a list of adjectives to modify the word “truck”:

big pickup American white disgraceful old

Quickly jot them down or number them in the order that feels right. Don’t struggle. Just write down what comes naturally. Was your order of adjectives more or less like this? Disgraceful big old white American pickup truck?

Here’s another try. These words modify the word “shirt”:

silk black long-sleeved Italian new overpriced

Was your order similar to this? overpriced new long-sleeved black Italian silk shirt?

There are 720 possible word orders for the set of truck adjectives and 5040 for the shirt set. I’m guessing the word order you chose is quite similar to mine. Why is that?

Obviously, there’s a reason. Adjectives in English almost always MUST be in this order: opinion first, then size-age-shape-color-origin-material-purpose NOUN. Opinion can be anything, even something you initially think of as factual. Thus, “beautiful blonde detective” versus “blonde beautiful detective.”

Who knew? As you’re reading, you may be surprised how often this adjective word-order rule is followed. Mostly unconsciously, on the author’s part. After writing this exercise I did run into a sentence that violated the rule. It wasn’t a catastrophe, but it did muddle the meaning. It mentioned a “comfortable old wingback red chair.”

Now if the world were full of red chairs, or they were some special category of chairs—a type of Chippendale, say—then “wingback” would distinguish this red chair from, say, a beanbag style red chair and might precede “red,” as the author had it. But neither of those conditions applies. To achieve a more precise phrase we’re left with following the rule: “comfortable (opinion) old red wingback chair.” Wingback chair being a specific type of chair, like dining room chair. You’d stumble over “dining room” if it appeared anywhere else in that phrase, as I did with “wingback.” For situations that aren’t so clear-cut, the rule is a handy thing to have.

Next Week: Those pesky adverbs!

To see previous posts in this series, covering nouns, verbs, and modifiers, click the “Writer’s First Draft” tab on my website home page (www.vweisfeld.com).

Every Word’s a Choice: Part 6 — More on Modifiers

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In the last post of this series, the emphasis was on modifiers, adjectives specifically. It talked about three keys to choosing a adjectives that will help your readers create the story picture you want to paint: they must be significant, sensory details are powerful, avoid overload.

Here are a few more attributes of adjectives to be alert to.

Precision
Some adjectives are so overused and vague they’ve become meaningless. What does it mean when you read that someone received “a big check” or “a little diamond,” that a new co-worker is pretty or beautiful or handsome? These judgments totally depend on the reader’s perspective and provide remarkably little information. They’ve become empty calories on the adjective buffet.

You might think it’s descriptive to say a dress is blue. But how many shades of blue are there? A website for designers shows 144. How descriptive is it, really, to say “blue”? Or green? There are 50 of them above. How different are Army green (maybe you’d choose it for the clothes of an ex-military character), fungal green (for a house in disrepair), Kelly green (for a patriotic Irishman), or teal (for a fashionista)?

The point is to make your descriptions as vivid as possible, which may mean going beyond the first adjective that comes to mind.

Surroundings
You know the old saying, “clothes make the man.” How you describe what characters wear, their living accommodations, their cars, the foods they eat—all should be selected based on who they are. A Buick is an American car manufactured by General Motors, as we all know. But if you write that your character is a Buick owner or a Lamborghini owner, your readers will surmise more about him than that he has a vehicle to get around in.

In other words, as in our discussion of verbs, the descriptive words you use have not only a literal, everyday meaning, they also carry connotations. If you say your protagonist is a Harvard graduate, that’s different than sending him to Michigan or Baylor. Different schools convey different impressions about the graduate, his family, his connections, and his attainments beyond the seal on the diploma. Make these choices mindfully.

Cliches
A word of caution: You don’t want to describe a character by drawing on all the clichés of status, high or low. People are more complicated than that, and such descriptions don’t ring true. I’ve received dozens of Facebook friend requests—you probably have too—from “retired Navy Seals” who live in Hawai`i, whose photos include friendly-looking dogs and adoring grandkids. And, oh, they’re all widowers. And handsome! Lucky me! These are clichés meant to make the guy seem manly, upstanding, and really OK. They make me laugh.

Once you settle on which details you need, you also have to find a fresh way to express them, avoiding clichés and overused phrases. Publishers don’t like them. Readers roll their eyes. Five years from now, your text may seem dated. Some clichés are so common, they can slip into our prose without our even noticing them. It takes a good ear to tune them in. One I read frequently is: “She let out the breath she didn’t know she was holding.” Have read this a dozen times, most recently last week (in Yellowface), where it was used to demonstrate use of a cliché–an archetype of the trite. How do you know what’s tired and what’s fresh? This is one more reason writers have to READ.

Here are two descriptions, one of a city scene, the other of two sisters. These are the kinds of topics authors write about every day. They can be banal. But these authors dug in and their descriptions are memorable.
“We stopped in the shadows of decrepit wooden structures leaning toward one another over the cobbled pavement as though telling secrets.”(The Railway Conspiracy, SJ Rozan and John Shen Yen Nee)
“Mandy’s clothes are smooth and sharp, Tia’s are rumpled and faded. Mandy’s hair is always pulled back. Tia’s is a mess of tangles. In short, Mandy is pressed. Tia is line dried.”(The Final Episode, Lori Roy)

Dialog is Different
As always, dialog is different than narrative. Trite phrases you wouldn’t consider including in your narration may be perfectly acceptable in dialog. In fact, I’ve read stories in which a character speaks almost exclusively in clichés. It says a lot about them, too. It’s as if they only know what someone else has told them—or have absorbed only tired, worn-out ideas. Author J.P. Rieger has created a wily Baltimore police detective who spouts business jargon whenever he doesn’t want his bosses to know what he’s up to. It’s meaningless—and hilarious—but it reassures the bosses every time. (A recent review of the new biography of Elmore Leonard talks about his stellar dialog: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/07/07/elmore-leonards-perfect-pitch .)

Next Installment: Part 7: Word Order Mayhem (A family emergency has slowed the posting of these articles. Expect Part 7 in early October.)

Find past articles in this series in the Writer’s First Draft tab on the home page.

Every Word’s a Choice — Part 5 — How Adjectives Sharpen Definitions

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Whether you’re describing a person, a location, or a bit of action, details help readers envision it. Adjectives and adverbs provide many of these details. They help readers draw a mental picture of what your characters are experiencing. But adding details doesn’t mean piling on any old modifiers. Details, first of all, must be significant.

Here’s an example: “The entire palette was muted, faded, earthen . . . save for a lone splotch of brilliant, hysterical red on the dress of the peasant girl . . .” This quote is from the 2025 gothic thriller Victorian Psycho, which I reviewed yesterday. A key detail is that “splotch of brilliant, hysterical red.” Not only will the reader encounter quite a few splotches of red before the book’s last page, the most interesting aspect of the description is the unexpected word “hysterical.” They’ll run up on that one too.

Here’s another example: In my novel set in Rome, the blond hair of one gangster is mentioned several times the first time the reader “meets” him. Being white-blond, his hair sets him apart from other members of his gang and Italians in general. It’s a marker. When the blond hair is mentioned afterwards, most readers (those paying attention) will know exactly which gang member I’m writing about. A visual cue, like that blond hair, is sometimes more memorable than a character’s name.

That goes for sensory details in general—our descriptions can include more than what we see in our imaginations. They can include what we hear, feel, smell—even taste. A woman who always wears lilac perfume, a man whose voice has a growl underneath it, air so thick with pollution you can taste it. Or what our senses can’t perceive: sudden silences, the emptiness in a room, as in this example: “Robert switches off the ignition. The engine shuts down. The air-conditioning and radio turn off. Inside the car, it’s suddenly quiet.” (Lori Roy, The Final Episode, 2025) The sudden quiet is a significant detail.

The corollary to choosing significant details is to avoid using too many of them. If a barista who’s an “extra” in your story hands over a cup of coffee, readers don’t need an inventory of her bleached-blonde hair and low-cut shirt. Readers work hard to assemble a mental picture of what you describe, and then try to keep track of it. It’s annoying to go to that effort for unnecessary facts. Plus, too many details slow the story.

Master story-writer Anton Chekov once cautioned a young author about overloading the details: “You have so many modifiers that the reader has a hard time figuring out what deserves his attention, and it tires him out.” The key here again, is significant details

If you’ve done a great deal of research on some technical topic, and you believe it’s important to convey it, try weaving it in like you would backstory. Information dumps of any kind are tedious. Still, as I remember the late Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal, he spends a considerable number of words describing the gun the Jackal selects for his assassination attempt and the modifications he wants made to it. It’s techy-stuff, but Forsyth’s character explains the purpose of each feature and change he wants. He made these details significant. He gathered me in, making me an accomplice to the crime he was planning.

Next Tuesday: More modifiers

Part 1: Introduction to “ Every Word’s a Choice”—finding the best words to tell your story. The series is based on a talk I recently gave at a writers’ conference. https://vweisfeld.com/?p=11484

Part 2: Using effective nouns to establish a relationship with readers. https://vweisfeld.com/?p=11501

Part 3: A strong verb can do a lot for your story.

Every Word’s a Choice – Part 3

Part 4: More about the importance of colorful verbs.

Every Word’s a Choice – Part 4

Every Word’s a Choice – Part 4 — Verbs (Still) Do the Heavy Lifting

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Here’s more on how choosing strong verbs can bring your story alive.

Does your character merely walk into a room? How does he walk in? You can make his style of entry specific and more visual by adding an adverb:
            He walked slowly into the room.
            She walked briskly into the room.
Better yet, choose a strong verb—one that works harder for you.
            He can stroll, sashay, amble, stagger, or trudge into the room.
            She can stride, race, march, skip, or strut.

Characters can hike, parade, saunter, shuffle, step, skip, wander, lope, meander, plod, shamble, hustle, and on and on. It all depends on who they are and what they may expect to find in that room. A teenage boy about to be called to task for denting the family Buick will enter the living room where his father waits very differently than would his sister who just won the school spelling bee. Personally, I’d like to see a character who scuttles into a room, but I haven’t yet written about a scuttler.

Try this
Think about how you might replace the pedestrian verbs in the following sentences with something more interesting. In some cases, tighten up the wording or remove unnecessary filter verbs (like “see,” “hear,” etc.). These sentences aren’t wrong. They’re just not as interesting as they might be. And a whole book of not very interesting sentences ends up being a not very interesting book. Here’s an example of verb replacement: The cat was in a square of bright light. You might replace “was” with “sunned.”

Your turn:
He said that was great. (Hint: take out a couple of words.)
That bullet was much too close for comfort.
From the living room, I heard a great crash.
My glasses, broken in the fall, were in my jacket pocket.
I saw she was much too sunburned to have spent the day at the library.

Let’s look at a few of the verbs in our song (discussed in Part 2 of this series and linked again here). Right away, in the first line you’ll see a “was,” but there’s also a “carried,” which is an action you can picture and a “lived,” (a verb full of life). Strong and evocative verbs in the song include: “stopped rambling,” “marched me away,” “sailed off”—sounds like a lark, doesn’t it?—“stained,” “butchered,” “corpses piled” (no burial niceties). The Australian soldiers “sailed off” but, once wounded, were “shipped” back home, like cargo.

One thought to bear in mind. Words have their usual, literal meaning, but they also carry secondary meanings. “Stained” is a good example. You can understand this verb as merely discoloration of the sand and water, but it also carries—maybe even subconsciously—the implication of shame or something dishonorable: “a stain on one’s reputation.” A stain is almost never a good thing. “Butchered” is another example. While it could just mean killed, in this context, it conjures up another, more powerful meaning—that of “indiscriminate slaughter.” Especially the choice of “like lambs to the slaughter,” with lambs being a symbol of “innocence.”

And, of course, readers bring their own context to a story and the words in it. While we all can be moved by the “lambs to the slaughter” image, the mother or brother of someone slain in war would hear it quite differently.

Like everyone, I have a few writing pet peeves, nails on the blackboard kind-of-things. They include the verbs “get” and “got.” I eliminate them as relentlessly as I chase down a wasp in the house. They’re perfectly fine words, but they mean so many things! Scroll down the list of definitions [https://www.dictionary.com/browse/get], and see for yourself. When you find one of them in your story, it’s an opportunity to identify a more precise verb!

Next Tuesday: Adjective and Adverbs
Part 1: Introduction to “ Every Word’s a Choice”—finding the best words to tell your story. The series is based on a talk I recently gave at a writers’ conference. https://vweisfeld.com/?p=11484
Part 2:  Using effective nouns to establish a relationship with readers. https://vweisfeld.com/?p=11501
Part 3: A strong verb can do a lot for your story. https://vweisfeld.com/?p=11536

Every Word’s a Choice – Part 3 — Verbs Do the Heavy Lifting

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Some languages get their power from colorful imagery (Arabic, for example). Others—like Chinese and English—offer strong verbs. Are the verbs in your stories doing all the work you want them to do? Weak verbs produce flabby prose.

Avoiding Weak Verbs

The various forms of the verb “to be” are weak verbs. “To be” verbs—is, are, was, were, and so on—do only one thing, they establish that something or somebody exists, they do not tell us anything more. They embody no action. Other weak verbs include forms of have and do, as well as shall, will, should, would, may, might, must, can, and could. As an editor, I like sentences that get to the point. “There is” and “there are” are weak ways to start a sentence. Instead of plunging readers into the action, they put distance between you and your reader.

“To be” verbs slip into our writing in other roles too. You use them when you want to suggest a continuing action, one that takes place over time, like “She was eating a sandwich while he talked,” though you could just as well say the more direct “She ate a sandwich while he talked.” Compare this pair of sentences. Which arouses more interest?

He was driving erratically. versus
The car veered over the center line and back right, nearly clipping the curb.

“To be” verbs also appear in passive voice constructions. Editors constantly tell writers to “avoid the passive.” Passive constructions hide the responsible actor (like the famous “Mistakes were made.” By whom?). Of course, if you’re writing a mystery, you may want to obscure the guilty party! The passive does work occasionally, but, as a general rule, steer clear. (Find some passive voice myths punctured here.)

Sensory Verbs—Do You Need Them?

Verbs related to one of the senses—heard, saw, smelled, tasted, felt—often end up being filter verbs. They put distance—a filter—between you as the author and your readers. If you write, “Jack heard the front door slam,” you tell readers three things: the door slammed, and Jack heard it, and some unseen narrator is telling them so. You’ve put a little narrative gap in there. If you simply write “the front door slammed,” the reader hears it too. Directly. Much more engaging. Another comparison:

She saw a man’s shadow on the bedroom wall. versus
A man’s shadow inched across her bedroom wall.

Your Prose Isn’t a Movie

As you picture the action of a story in your mind, you may be tempted to describe all your characters’ movements for clarity. But readers easily follow everyday actions involving sitting, standing, turning, walking, etc. without having them spelled out. There’s no one right choice in handling everyday actions. The important thing is to think about it. Make your choice consciously. For example:

He stood up from the chair and walked through the door, out into the hall. versus
He left the room.

No one will think he dragged the chair out of the room with him. Of course he got up. And he couldn’t have left the room without walking through the door. You can cut to the chase unless there’s a reason not to. Another one:

She rose from the kitchen table, shuffled to the stove and picked up the coffeepot, turned back to me at the table, and filled my cup. versus
She poured me another cup of coffee.

If she poured the cup of coffee, all the other actions are implied, and you can move along, unless there’s a compelling reason for all the detail. Maybe she is very weak or infirm, and doing all that is a Big Deal. Maybe the reader knows she’s put something harmful in the coffee, so the minute attention to the action is deliberately dragging out the suspense.

More on verbs next Tuesday.

Part 1: Introduction to “ Every Word’s a Choice”—finding the best words to tell your story. The series is based on a talk I recently gave at a writers’ conference. https://vweisfeld.com/?p=11484
Part 2:  Using effective nouns to establish a relationship with readers. https://vweisfeld.com/?p=11501

Every Word’s a Choice — Part 2 — Nouns Name the World

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To get the most out of this series of posts on ways for writers to “find the best words,” you may want to give a read to Eric Bogle’s bush ballad, “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda.” The first four verses illustrate many points I’ll be making. Many versions of the song are on YouTube, but reading it is probably best at first, because it’s free of the singer’s interpretation. It’s just you and the words. Like your readers and your words.

Once you’ve read it, I hope you agree the songwriter chose words that effectively create a moving lyric. It’s full of descriptive language. Which individual words strike you? Here are two that particularly strike me:

  • “tin hat”—doesn’t sound like it would give much protection does it? To me, “tin hat” immediately conjures an image like that above. Vulnerability.
  • how about “corpses”? Most times we’d say “bodies” here, but corpses is so much more powerful. We all have a body, we think of our bodies, we don’t think of ourselves as a “corpse.”

Nouns Name the World

Chances are, some of the words you picked out from the song are powerful nouns. Picking the right noun is the first step in establishing a relationship with your readers. Think back to how nouns were described in elementary school: Nouns NAME THINGS. The right noun tells readers what you’re talking about.

You probably recognize “Waltzing Matilda”—it’s called the “unofficial national anthem of Australia.” But do you know what “Waltzing Matilda” actually means? It isn’t a ballroom dance. In Australian slang, “waltzing” means traveling on foot. Americans use “waltz” to signal an easy accomplishment, often one a person is rather smug about: You might write,

“The detective waltzed into the squad room, grinning. ‘I solved the case!’”

What about “Matilda”? – Not a girlfriend. A Matilda is a backpack and sleeping gear. So to go “waltzing Matilda” is to hike the country carrying your possessions with you.

We know what the “outback” is—thank you, Outback Steak House. What about Murray’s green basin? The Murray is Australia’s longest river. Since so much of the country is desert or semi-arid, the green along the river is precious. The Circular Quay, near the end of the song, is Sydney Harbor.

Now that we’re oriented, let’s examine some of the other things its nouns do. A number of words here serve as touchstones—or anchors—for the reader—particularly for an Australian hearer, but for anyone who knows a little history. Touchstones bring you and your reader onto the same page. They build rapport between you. They let you inside their heads, linking your story to things they already know and have feelings about.

Two of those touchstones provide the first signal of what’s coming: 1915, Gallipoli. Most people born in the 20th Century will know instantly the song is about World War I, even if Eric Bogle hadn’t then written “marched me away to the war.” The instant the verse lands on “Gallipoli,” we know tragedy looms. (And notice where this ominous word is strategically placed—at the end of the line for maximum impact.)

But even if you’ve forgotten that terrible battle, plenty of details fill you in. The songwriter pulls you in deep with “Johnny Turk was ready.” This reference is a little more esoteric, unless you’re a history buff. The ill-prepared Australian troops were ordered to march ashore with virtually no covering fire because their officers were overconfident. Plus their maps were wrong. Plus their intelligence was bad. They simply believed the Turks were no match for troops with British leadership. They believed the Turks would NOT be ready, but it was the British who weren’t prepared. So, that line is a little jab at the Brits.

In our song, many of the specific geographic touchstones—the outback, Murray’s green basin, Circular Quay—are well-known to Australian hearers. Eric Bogle could use them because he knew his hearers would understand what they were—and what they stood for.

Americans have significant touchstones too. If we mention any of them, we’re likely to evoke a particular feeling. We don’t need a lengthy explanation of certain times (9/11, D-Day), places (Pearl Harbor, Selma), events (the Kennedy assassination, Hurricane Katrina), mindsets (The Depression) or geography (The West, Martha’s Vineyard). You can make a connection with most Americans with just those words.

Obviously, you have to be judicious. You don’t want to evoke the wrong thing. Referring to Ruby Ridge could pull up a range of feelings. Readers might also have unpredictable reactions to Waco, Watts, Chicago 1968.

Do you use touchstones in your writing? Could you? In her book The Final Episode, Lori Roy uses a fictional touchstone to anchor her story: the kidnapping of a young girl twenty years earlier. Everyone in the book knows and remembers the details of the crime and has had their lives altered because of it.

I’d be interested in knowing what touchstones you may have used.Part 1:Introduction to “ Every Word’s a Choice”—finding the best words to tell your story. The series is based on a talk I recently gave at a writers’ conference. Find it here:https://vweisfeld.com/?p=11484

Every Word’s a Choice — Part 1

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Last week, I gave a presentation at a writhing workshop sponsored by the Public Safety Writers Association—an organization for public safety professionals (police, fire, EMT, military, etc.) who write and the authors who write about them. It’s a great group for any crime writer because you can get all your procedure-strategy-mindset questions authoritatively answered.

I think I took a different tack than the “grammar lesson” people may have expected, and instead focused on words, using the best words, and using them better. Words are our smallest writing elements, and I started with this quote from Mark Twain:

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—it’s the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning”

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting some of the information and resources I assembled for the workshop, but first I’ll answer a basic question: Why focus on such a small unit of our literary output? I focused on the words we writers choose, because they are fundamental to improving our skill as  writers. They are fundamental to making that connection with our readers that keeps them turning pages and coming back for more.

Some of the information in this series may be in the category of “helpful reminders,” like the chime that reminds you to fasten your seat belt. Some of it may be new, or at least strike you in a new way. And all of it, I hope, builds your appreciation for the magic you create when you write your stories. Think about it: You go from a blank sheet of paper to something with meaning and impact for your readers.

I’ve come to realize that the black squiggles I put on paper are only half the job of writing. All readers, with their assumptions, experiences, understandings (or lack thereof) perform the other half. They’re what bring my work to life and allow it to entertain, inform, and, sometimes, reflect. Pulitzer-Prize Winner Robert Olen Butler says the author’s job is to set up a dream, then author and reader experience the dream together. Grammar errors, poorly chosen words (even typos), jolt readers out of the dream, and they may not come back.

Words are how we authors communicate our thoughts, our emotions, our stories. There’s no body language or tone of voice to clue readers in to what we were thinking when we wrote a particular passage. For that reason, we need to take our words seriously, so that we evoke in our readers the feelings and understandings, the tension and the resolution we strive for. Words are our tools. Above is a word cloud of my presentation, the tools I used that day. How long is that new story, that book? 85,000 words? 90,000? Well, then, the author has 85 or 90,000 chances to get the words exactly right!

I hope you’ll go with me in the succeeding weeks on this “Every Word’s a Choice” journey.

More Thoughts on the Curse of the Curse-Word

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Is there an up-side? A few days ago, I wrote about how and why writers may choose to use curse words in their fiction, depending on plot and character. A recent Washington Post article by Sam Jones talked about the “value” of cursing under extreme circumstances. The author wrote, “If you stub your toe or slam your finger in a door, there’s a good chance the first thing out of your mouth is a four-letter word.”

The article points to academic studies showing that that class of taboo words and phrases “has long held a unique and colorful status in language behavior.” (“Language behavior” typifying the unique and uncolorful style of academic writing.) 

But although swearing is a near-universal feature of language, it is still considered taboo by many. This universality suggests that there are benefits derived from using the words, and one of those benefits is this: an increase in pain tolerance and decreased perception of pain. Swearing is “a drug-free, calorie-neutral, cost-free  means of self-help,” said Richard Stephens, a British psychology researcher. I’d add that it also attracts attention, so if you’re there bleeding or clutching your broken arm, someone is more likely to come help than if you mutter, “Ouch. That hurt.”

Swearing also “has been linked to bolstered social bonds, improved memory, and even an alleviation of the social pain of exclusion or rejection,” as well as increased strength. (All I can say is that the characters in the Academy Award-winning movie Anora must have the memories of elephants.) The increase in strength makes sense, because when someone swears because they’re in pain, their heart rate increases, adrenaline surges, and blood diverts to your muscles in the “fight or flight” response.

If you’re an author debating whether your character should be swearing so much, or if you’re a reader wondering the same, think about whether the circumstances are such that swearing is more than a habit; it’s a coping mechanism. Next maybe they’ll research whether constant swearing reduces the physiological impact and, for those who swear constantly, weakens that potential source of help just when they need it most.

Curse of the Curse-Word

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The New York Times recently published an interview by Matt Richtel with Timothy Jay, “a scholar in the science of swearing,” which I read with interest. Probably every author comes up against the dilemma of whether and how much cursing their fictional characters should do. Some worry that libraries will turn their books down and some readers will complain, others (especially crime writers like me) may think that they’re not writing about nuns and clergy (or maybe they are), and a few choice curse words make dialog more realistic. And some just let ʼer rip.

There’s an argument that larding speech with cursing not only substitutes for a more thoughtful and meaningful word—in other words, promotes laziness in thinking as well as speech—and, possibly worse, in some opinions, dilutes the effectiveness of a well-placed “f—!!”

Jay says that cursing has become much more commonplace, “as part of the whole shift to a more casual lifestyle.” Yes, the advice columns receive letters from parents who’ve taken young children out to dinner, only to have the experience spoiled by loud cursing from a neighboring table. Handling that isn’t always easy or pleasant for the parents or restaurant staff called upon to intervene.

Social media, once again, takes some of the blame. In one study of Twitter posts published in 2014, profanity occurred in about one word of every ten—about twice the rate of spoken language. Now that Twitter is X, and many folks have abandoned the platform to the true believers, that rate may be higher. A story in today’s Washington Post reported the abuse a blind government worker received after being ridiculed by Musk on X. Unkind, people.

Online a person “can be aggressive without any physical retaliation” or personal consequences, as Jay points out. This no-restraints atmosphere contributes to another problem: the way women are increasingly attacked and harassed online.

Biometrics has shown that taboo words create a stronger emotional reaction in people than other words; they have effects on both speaker and hearer. However, Jay does say that his research group at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts has recorded more than 10,000 people swearing in public. Most of it, he says, is casual and “pretty harmless,” and has never resulted in aggression or violence. He views it as part of the perpetually evolving state of language.

For writers, who care and think about words more than most people probably do, it would be hard to lose the impact of a good swear word just when you need it, emphasis on those last four words.

AI-Generated image from Vocablitz for Pixabay