Fifty Ways to Leave Your Pixie

Okay, so check this out: the OED (that'd be the Oxford English Dictionary) estimates that there are approximately 250,000 distinct, non-technical words in the English language. This doesn't include the various inflections and cases of the words, just the actual words themselves.

Some of you are sitting there thinking "Really? Only 250,000? That doesn't seem like a lot. No wonder there are so few ways to describe bronze hair, or nipples." Just be glad you're writing in English, and not in, say, French, which has fewer than half as many words with which to convey the glory that is Edward Cullen.

You've got more raw material to work with than any other people on Earth. What do you do with it? Do you stretch yourselves and attempt to break new ground when you introduce us to Edward's smile, or Alice's stature? Or, do you flip the handle on the La-Z-Boy recliner and just grab a handy cliché to cover the situation?

The average college graduate has about 20,000 to 25,000 words in his or her active vocabulary, with access to the meanings of an additional 50,000 - 75,000 passive words (that is, words the person knows but which the person does not regularly use). Shakespeare used 31,534 different words in his collected works. Bloody Shakespeare, people. I'm asking you to aspire up.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love words. I love big words, and small words, and odd words, and all words. I hoard them. I'm passionate about them. I kick ass at freerice.com because I know what ululate and concomitant mean. I read dictionaries FOR THE FUN OF IT, just to meet new words and absorb them into my vocabulary Borg. But as much as I love the little buggers, I love nothing so much as finding and using the right words to convey, or conceal, or shade, or highlight a thought. Many times, the best word isn't the biggest word. The trick is to look at all the various ways in which you might say the thing you need to say, and then choose the word which best describes that thing. Economy and precision should be your primary goal, always.

There's no need to wander into a jungle of purple prose in order to accomplish the task. Here - rather than use an example from someone else, I'll share what might be a lame example from my own experience: in a recent chapter of "Breaking News", Edward is upset because Tanya is threatening to tell Bella something he really doesn't want her to know. Edward and Tanya argue about it, and then Tanya makes a decision to just go ahead and speak with Bella whether or not that's all right with Edward.

The words I chose to describe Edward's reaction to the situation were these:

"Tanya," Edward said, his voice in the octave of menace.

Now, I could have used "Tanya," Edward said threateningly. Or "Tanya," Edward warned. But I chose what I chose because Edward was really, really pissed, and because his relationship with Tanya allows him to show her that without using any polite convention to mask his true feelings. Using the word "octave" immediately brings the tone of his voice to the mind of the reader. Pairing "octave" with "menace" provides the reader with the information that Edward's voice was low and lethal, and without question really, really unhappy about where this thing was headed.

You hear the word "threat" almost every day. There's a threat of rain in the forecast, or the amount of paperwork on your desk threatens to make you late for dinner, or the newspaper informs you that the terrorist threat in the United States is currently at Orange Level. And "threat" should make you aware that something bad might happen, but you're kind of inured to the word, so it doesn't punch you in the head with the gravity of its meaning. Now, "menace", on the other hand, isn't a word you hear all that often. There's no menace of rain in the forecast. It sounds more dangerous, even though the dictionary will tell you that it means the same thing as "threat"; in fact, Merriam-Webster uses "threat" to define the word "menace". "Menace" means "I want to hurt you", and nothing else.

Let's look at Alice for a moment. When Twific authors need to describe the way she looks, many of them just reach for the word "pixie", because heck, that's what everyone else uses, and it fits, so why torture yourself to come up with another way to communicate the effect? Because you're writers, that's why. She's elfin, and a sprite, and delicate, and Happy-Meal-sized. She's minikin and diminutive. She is anything small and energetic and full of mischief and determination. She's a glass figurine with an iron core.

It's possible that you're feeling a little panicked right now. You want to reach for a thesaurus and start combing through it for different words to use. STOP. In the wrong hands, a thesaurus is a dangerous weapon. If you really want to deliver fresh writing, work on increasing your word-store instead of looking to a thesaurus to provide you with options for words you already know. Your words are your arsenal. A thesaurus offers you words which are similar in meaning, but which might also have shades of meaning which you definitely do NOT want to include in your writing.

Wander on over to thesaurus.com and plug the word "gasp" into the search function. The site defines "gasp" the noun as "a sharply drawn breath", and "gasp" the verb as "to draw breath in sharply". Now look at the words they offer you for consideration as substitutes: blow, ejaculation, exclamation, gulp, heave, pant, puff, wheeze, whoop for the noun definition, and: blow, catch one's breath, choke, convulse, fight for breath, gulp, heave, inhale, inspire, pant, puff, respire, sniffle, snort, wheeze, whoop for the verb definition.

Do any of those really replace the shock and surprise Bella feels when Edward looks at her and says 'You're the most beautiful girl in all of Forks High, Bella. If I could dream, I'd dream about you.' ? Of course they don't, which is what makes a thesaurus a dangerous and unreliable resource in the wrong hands. If you wrote "Bella wheezed when Edward told her that she was the most beautiful girl in all of Forks High, and that if he could dream, he'd dream about her", you'd be writing crackfic. Devote some time to considering how Bella would really feel if she heard those words from Edward Cullen. It changes her world. She's redefined through his eyes, and has his attention and admiration in a way she never expected to capture it.

Choosing words carefully is what elevates an author from someone who's just farting around here to someone who is serious about advancing and polishing their craft. It marks a story with a truly individual stamp, because it shows that nobody else sees things with the precise clarity that you can offer. And while no author gets it right every single time, working toward the goal of finding and using words which mean exactly what you need them to mean is part of the fun and joy and magic of good storytelling, both for the author and for the reader.