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.