Erudite Exposition

When my sister came over for a visit, she said she had read my first two books on her Kindle. What surprised me was that she claimed I’d forced her to look up a word she didn’t know. She’s smarter than I am, having recently finished her Juris Doctor and passing the bar on her first attempt.

Some members of my new writers’ group in Romeo say I use too many big or obscure words. This may be true. I possess a fairly large vocabulary and I’m not afraid to use it, but I’m not alone. I’ve seen some doozies in my recent reading. Some of the words aren’t even in the unabridged dictionary. I don’t have an Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which runs multiple volumes, and hope never to resort to one.

One of my recent favorites, which actually appeared in a thriller, was orison, which simply means prayer. “The praying person finished his orisons before turning his attention toward me.” This use, though obscure, points out one reason for liberal application of synonyms: to avoid using the same word twice in the same sentence.

My friend Ann Rant frequently calls me out for using the same noticeable word twice in a chapter. She’d prefer that I use something only once in the entire book, but that’s harder to sustain.

The main reason I find myself stretching into the depths of my vocabulary is clichés, or more precisely avoiding them. While mysteries and thrillers are often full of clichés, I try to avoid them whenever possible. I believe they can reasonably creep into common speech, but expository and descriptive writing is better if the references and metaphors are fresh. It is not often easy to do.

There is a very good rationale for avoiding fancy words: writers need to stick to about a tenth grade reading level to avoid losing readers. It seems pitiable, but the fact is that not much more than a quarter of all Americans have degrees. About half of all high school graduates try college, but in my experience the others are in over their heads. Just because someone passed twelfth grade does not mean they are proficient at that level.

Tenth grade is good.

Since you have to be smarter than the average bear to even find my books, I don’t think I’m not losing too many readers because of my extended vocabulary.