Part of being a writer is finding the right word. That’s not as easy as it sounds. Words have great meaning in our heads as we think of them, but on paper, they don’t always work as envisioned. Remember, a word not only needs to evoke vision and emotion in the writer, but also(mostly) in the audience. And that word choice often comes down to a matter of degree. In other words, it’s more often a choice between anxious and nervous rather than between tree and whistle.
I encountered this recently while trying to decide between
tiresome and tedious. Which fit
better? The scene was about a routine
task, so was the task tiresome, or was it tedious. I decided that it was more tedious than
tiresome, because, to me, tedious evoked images of moving forward but being
mind numbingly boring while doing so.
Tiresome, on the other hand, spoke to me of an air of exasperation, as
if someone was sighing while doing the task.
Yes, we writers really do obsess over these things. They may seem trivial to the reader(I just
substituted reader for audience), but they’re often the difference between
being interesting and engaging. Interest
is great, but if I can get someone engaged, I may have hooked a reader for
life.
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