One of the most difficult writing tools to explain is Tool #12: “Give
key words their space.” In other words, “Do not repeat a
distinctive word unless you intend a specific effect.” I’ve
coined a term to describe this effect: Observe word territory.
Because the issues here concern repetition and variation, we should pay
attention to our old pal Mr. Synonym. I say old pal because in
1960 my mother bought me my first Roget’s Thesaurus. Before
long I was word-drunk, incapable of using a short word when a long word
would do. In no time I went from word-drunk to word-inebriated, to
word-besotted. I became a word drunkard, sot, tippler, bibber, soaker,
sponge reveler, wino, carouser, devotee to Bacchus, dipsomaniac.
No longer could you find in my little sixth grade
stories words like chew, drew or screw. Instead, you’d get
“masticate,” “delineate,” or “fornicate.” (I didn’t really write
“fornicate” in sixth grade, but I wanted to. I went to Catholic school, after all.) It took me a
while to break my show-offy addiction to the thesaurus. Then one
day I figured it out: Don’t use the thesaurus to look up long
fancy new words. Use it to remind yourself of words you already know.
I remember the day I was coaching a young newspaper writer, Frank
DeLoache, who had written a profile of a medical examiner. Often the doc’s autopsies would help police
arrest murderers and rapists, so Frank continued to refer to him
as a “medical detective.”
“I keep using that phrase over and over,” said Frank. “Can you help me find an alternative?”
“Let’s take a look at the thesaurus,” I said.
We found several interesting synonyms: sleuth, spy, Sherlock,
private dick, cop, investigator. Then our eyes
settled on “bloodhound.” A dictionary gave us a definition for an
informal usage: “a relentless pursuer,” which fit the doctor like a
latex
glove. More exciting was the discovery of a synonym that
contained the word “blood.”
A teacher once argued that there are no true synonyms. That
was a useful lesson when we were deciding whether to call something a
“movie” or a “film.” (One critic joked that you can’t call a
cinematic work a “film” if the theater sells Gummy Bears in the lobby.)
But what about “rock” and “stone,” oh wise teacher, what about “sofa”
and “couch”? I use those last two words interchangeably to
describe the same piece of furniture, unless I’m at my shrink’s office
in which case I’m “on the couch.” (No psychiatrist is permitted
to own a “sofa.”)
Which leads me back to word territory and an example I recently
discovered in English literature. One of the most famous poems of the
Romantic period is “Ode to a Skylark” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792-1822). The first line (“Hail to thee, blithe spirit!”) is so oft-quoted that it inspired the
title for a Noel Coward play: “Blithe Spirit.” What follows is a gorgeous comparison of the song of the
bird to the song of the poet. Here is the fourth stanza:
The pale purple even [evening]
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven,
In the broad daylight
Thou are unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.
But in the original manuscript, you can see the revision in that last
line. Shelley crosses out “blithe” delight and replaces it
with “shrill” delight. The effect is dazzling. Not only
does he avoid the repetition of the key word in the poem’s first line,
but he replaces that word with a sound word, a delight the reader can
hear. In other words, he gives both key words “blithe” and
“shrill” their own space.
[Can any of you add testimony on your strategies for using a
thesaurus? Perhaps an instance in which you discovered or
remembered an important word?]
