On Writing: Words and Characterization

by Reed James

It should come as no surprise that words are very important to a writer. English is a rich language, and that gives writers a lot of tools when it comes to their writings. Often we have two, three, or even more words that can convey almost the same meaning, with only minor differences in the shades of their meeting. Since words are our tools, we should get to know them well, keeping them sharp and choosing the right word for the write task.

Take ‘yell’, ‘shout’, and ‘cry’. They all pretty much mean the same thing: to exclaim. But yell has connotations of anger and rebuke, shout gives the feeling that the character is trying to be heard over another noise or over distance, and cry adds a feeling of pain or sadness or even passion to what the character exclaims.

This is very important when it comes to characterization. Depending on your writing style, you could be employing first person or third person limited POVs, where the narrator either is your character or the narrator lives in the mind of the character. This is less important in normal third person narrative, where the narrator is omniscient and can flit in and out of character’s minds for brief moments. Different characters will think with different words, and when you’re writing their POV you need to demonstrate that. An uneducated person isn’t going to use large, scientific, or obscure words and is more likely to use slang and simple words. A prudish person isn’t like to use harsh swear words like ‘fuck’ or ‘shit’, and may use euphemisms like ‘fudge’ or ‘shoot’. A religious person may not use the Lord’s name in vain. Regional dialect will crop up, changing the patterns of speech. Even with an omniscient narrator your characters will still speak, and their speech should reflect who they are. Maybe its punctuated with obscenities, maybe their given over to verbose speech in an effort to prove how intelligent they are, maybe they use a lot of technical jargon.

The protagonist of my upcoming erotica ‘My Test Drive Lover’ is a lesbian. She’s working at a dealership selling Ferraris. My own inclination is to use the word ‘salesmen’ to describe her job. I’m a man and often don’t think about such gender issues (I know, a failing on my part), but Aurora is not a man, and she certainly wouldn’t be one to use a gender specific title when the gender neutral ‘salesperson’ is available. That’s an important thing as a writer; you have to be prepared to step out of your own experiences and into someone else’s. You have to try and imagine not just how they would act, but how they would speak and think, changing your own language to match theirs like a chameleon changing his skin to blend into the background. And you do that by mastering your words.

And mastering your words takes practice. I’m not perfect. I make grammar mistakes all the time. I bet there’s going to be one or two in this article that I’ll completely miss when I edited this. That’s life; you’re only human. But you have to strive and practice. If you don’t care enough to understand your tools—your words—then your audience will pick up on that. So read up on grammar. When you have a question, look it up on the internet or ask someone’s opinion. Writing is a craft and, like all crafts, it takes practice to hone and maintain. Your writing will only benefit from this.

Here’s a couple of sites I use when I have questions:
Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary: The go to dictionary for American English. They have a free site, but their unabridged dictionary costs about $30 dollars a year, and they add new words to it all the time.
Grammar Monster: Short and quick rules.
Your Dictionary: A nice, ordered site for looking up rules.
Grammar Girl: She has a great article on what to look for while editing.

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