Chapter Text
1: Know Your Words
If there is any thing I learned from our Inquiries teacher that teaches Philosophy and uses sophisticated English instead of providing lessons we can actually use for our research paper, it’s that not all synonymous words have the same meaning or level.
If, for example, using the word ‘spread’ has become an abundance in your story, you should know that using ‘scatter’ is fine but can also be wrong depending on the context.
If we’re talking about ways in which you can describe a group of people ‘spreading out’ to search for something, using ‘scatter’ is fine. But you should know that ‘spreading out’ means deliberately going in different directions so as to not search the same place together and maximize the number of people in a search party. ‘Scatter’ may mean the same thing, but it’s actually more random than that. In this case, the word ‘disperse’ may be of better use.
When making a sandwich, however, both ‘scatter’ and ‘disperse’ may not be suitable alternatives for ‘spread’. You can’t scatter peanut butter, you can only ‘wipe’ it (though it’s not recommended as it’s too vague – and no, ‘rub’ is inappropriate as well unless you want your sandwich to end up mashed since the word is ‘rougher’) or ‘apply’ it – in which case, it’s better to look for other ways to describe the action.
As you can see, there are other ways to put actions into words than using synonyms. You can describe ‘spread’ into ‘going into different directions’ and ‘caress’ as ‘running his hand through [noun]’ etc.
Of course, using synonyms can also be good if only to avoid using the same words repeatedly. I would recommend Merriam-Webster¹ to check whether the words you’re using are similar and applicable to the synonyms you’re looking for. There’s also Thesaurus² – but of course, before you proceed to this step, you must also be familiar with the English language and proper spellings.
Aside from being part of the basics, it would be best to learn proper grammar first. Most writers fail in setting the tone of the story and its ‘atmosphere’ when they make this mistake despite using ‘big words’. You could say – it ruins the mood.
For me, I still haven’t mastered this step myself – but it would do us well to follow it, I assure you.
~~~CHAO!!!~~~