Sometimes, the right word isn’t the more succinct option. For example, I once (just once) read a medical murder mystery. In the climactic action scene, the villain picked up a [obscure medical device] and snuck up on a character.

BAM. I put the book down and hit the Internet. (Okay, I actually finished the scene. I wanted to see if I could figure it out in context. Nope: I was mightily confused because [OMD] played a big role in the scene—the villain injured the character with it, I think—and I had no idea what [OMD] might look like or how it’d make that kind of wound.)

So I looked up [OMD] (she used the name, of course, but I don’t remember it). Pretty wicked looking thingy. Knowing that it had an inch-wide metal spike might have helped me a.) not be so confused and b.) actually worry about the character.

Granted, the word was probably in the character’s realm of knowledge. But we have to balance the characters’ vocabulary against the audience’s: even if your character can use the word jabot in conversation, if your audience can’t understand it, is it the right word?

Conversely, there are reasonable limits to our pandering. One of my favorites here is a friend of mine who had her work critiqued by a college-level creative writing class. One member of the class told her not to use a word because he didn’t know what it meant. The word? Betrothed.

What do you think? Does every word have to be transparent to the lowest common denominator? At what level do we need to do more to describe or explain something our characters never think about?

Photo by Ian Boggs

It seems like we writers are always in search of something: a great idea, the right plot, the next scene, time to write . . . And it’s been this way for a long time. More than a hundred years ago, Mark Twain described one such writerly-pursuit:

The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter—it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.
- Letter to George Bainton, 10/15/1888

Of course, there are a few basics that make a word “wrong”: misuse, for example—homonyms, malapropisms, and trying to use words that we think we know what that means, right? (Dictionaries are our friends!)

Frequently, the “right” word is the one that describes vividly, powerfully and succinctly. Instead of “the brightly-colored, flashy, convertible Italian sports car,” we say “the red Lamborghini.” The Lamborghini comes with eleven cupholders connotations that convey more than a laundry list of adjectives. An “abyss” is a stronger emotional picture than a “hole.”

We also have to take into acccunt our characters. If it’s in a character’s voice, it should suit the character, his personality, education level, regional speech, cadence, vocabulary, time period, etc.

Of course, sometimes the “right” word is wrong. (But we’ll talk about that tomorrow.) Obviously, there’s way more to finding the right word than avoiding errors and lists that detract from our meaning instead of add to it. What do you think? What makes a word “right” or “wrong”?

Photo by James Jordan