Word Choice: Elevate Your Fiction Writing

Welcome back to the Killer Prose Podcast, the show where we talk about everything having to do with indie horror and crime writing.

I'm your host, fellow author Tanner Rutledge.

So today we're going to be talking about the importance of choosing the right words.

The way you describe things, the words that you use and your choices are really what colors the story and guides the reader through the way that you're going to describe things.

And the word choice you're going to use for a horror is much, much different than the way you're going to describe things in the language used in a cozy mystery.

And oftentimes the real thing that differentiates a genre is going to be what you focus on and the words you choose to describe it.

I spent about 15 years as a licensed private investigator and I wrote a lot of investigative reports.

I had some surveillance reports that were 50 pages long, some longer, and I had to condense all of that down into about a half page investigative narrative that was precise and concise because lawyers don't have a whole lot of time to sit around reading reports and.

And I wanted to make sure that I was able to quickly reference things if I needed to when I was testifying in court.

So I learned really, really quick, never use three words when one word will do the job.

And that was in writing reports.

In fiction writing, we're not just trying to get across what is happening.

We're also using these words to give us insights into a character's psychology or.

Or a world and the way that we want people to see it.

Is it bright and happy?

Is it dark and grimy?

In movies, there's filters and music scores that cue the audience to have a certain picture in their head and to have the picture that they're actually watching on the screen.

We don't have that as writers.

All we have are our words.

The way that we describe a scene, the way that we describe movement, colors that world.

It also gives us insight into our characters and helps us build deeper, more relatable main characters, especially if you're riding in a close third or a first person, which is what I tend to do with my stuff.

You have a character watching a sunset, and a sunset is a sunset.

But as you're coloring in the world, do you decide to focus on the beauty of the sun setting over the skyline and the colors washing across the sky?

Or the encroaching darkness and the chill creeping into the air as the last few rays of warmth leave and retreat for the night?

Same sunset.

Maybe you have two characters standing Side by side in completely different stories.

But one's in one genre, one's in another, just because of what they focused on there in that sunset.

One is probably a pretty positive person going through life, pretty average.

The other might be a grizzled detective or someone who is used to looking at the darker side of things and maybe is waiting on the other shoe to drop.

That description of the scene as seen through the eyes of the character and the filter of the character gives us an idea of what story we're telling and.

And tells us what the character really keys in on.

It also sets up the atmosphere for the book.

Like I said, movies have special lenses and musical scores.

All we have is what we decide to focus on and the words that we decide to use to describe it.

Alice looked at Danny.

I know what you did.

Alice glared at Danny.

I know what you did.

Basically, the same thing is happening there, but we have a much better idea of what's going on in that second sentence.

Again, because of word choice, this oftentimes doesn't happen in the first draft.

When I write my first drafts, they're actually very similar to investigation reports.

It is nuts and bolts what's happening in the story.

I get some character stuff in there, but the real magic happens in revision.

I start going through.

And one of the things that I key in on early is adjectives and adverbs.

Don't cut them all out.

They do have a place.

But a lot of times that is a key that maybe you didn't use quite the right word.

Johnny ran quickly.

Okay, what was happening in the story, and why?

Was he running quickly?

Was he sprinting into a building?

Did Johnny sprint up the stairs?

Was he trying to get away from something?

Did Johnny scramble up the stairs?

Two completely different things inside of the context of the story that give the reader a different impression and a different mental picture of what's happening.

Maybe Johnny threw himself up the stairs.

That's different, too.

And you can get a little bit more colorful.

Maybe Johnny opened up the throttle and took off.

Have fun with it and remember to filter it through your character.

And, you know, Rand quickly turned into open up the throttle or threw himself.

Sometimes the right word is three words.

There might not be a word in English that really gets the point across that you're trying to make.

And that's where descriptors and adjectives and adverbs come in.

Another thing I look for are weak words.

I don't think that's really a term, but it's one that I use for Stuff that doesn't feel right.

This is very subjective.

But you know what?

You've been speaking English.

You use it every day.

This is your language as you're going through, and something doesn't feel right or something feels wrong, you're probably right.

Take a look at it.

One thing that I do, if I'm stuck and something just doesn't feel right, I'm going to look at the verb first and then hit the thesaurus to see if I can get a better word in there.

Or by looking at the definition of what I'm looking at, sometimes I come up with a whole new phrase or something else that needs to be added into the scene, which actually brings me down into cliches.

When it comes to cliches, just find a better way to do it.

These are things that are worn out.

Sometimes they work, and sometimes you might want to stick with it once in the book.

But if everybody is narrowing their eyes when they get mad, you have a problem.

So I'll use that as an example.

Johnny narrowed his eyes.

We need to find a better way to do that.

Why is Johnny narrowing his eyes?

He's mad because a drug dealer that he is talking to is lying to him and he's just getting tired of it.

So maybe instead of John narrowing his eyes, he's a big guy and he has spent his life hiding emotion.

He doesn't want to let anything get out because it makes people uncomfortable in this situation.

I don't think he cares about that, but it's a habit that he has.

And maybe he carries this squishy stress banana in his pocket and he's got his hand in his jacket pocket, and as the guy's talking to him, he's squeezing the banana.

He wants to get the temper under control.

And so every time this guy lies to him, he's just squeezing it harder and harder until his fingernails are cutting into his palm and he's bleeding on the banana in the pocket.

That not only gives you a much more visceral cue, I guess, for your.

For your reader, it gives us a little bit more insight into John.

He's working really hard to control his temper.

Also, he's a big guy, and it gives us a little bit more to play with in that scene.

And this is one of those things that can be a ripple that goes through the entire scene.

Once you finish that and you.

You get that little tidbit about John, maybe it changes the vibe of the scene.

Recently I was going back through, I say recently on one of my last walkthroughs of the Whisper Hollow book.

I got to a scene, it was where the, the detective found the body.

And it was pretty standard crime thriller.

And I really focused on my word choice for how he was moving through the hall of this older house.

And it started to feel a little bit more like a haunted house.

It started kind of getting a Scooby Doo vibe.

Now it's a.

It's a murder mystery, it is a mystery thriller.

But it brought in some of those spooky elements and it went from that one little spot of the scene into the entire scene and honestly into the entire book to give it a.

A new feel.

It's kind of, I don't know, it turned it into maybe a gothic screwball mystery thriller or something.

But that all came from a moment like this where I had a cliche in the area where he was finding the body and just fixing that.

And it gave me a really interesting tone for the book, gave me more insight into the character.

And I think my readers are going to enjoy that more.

And that book is coming out later this year.

I will talk about it when the book's out and it is coming out later this year.

So word choice is important.

And doing stuff like this.

Now I'm going to stay on this for a minute because when you do something weird like the Squishy Banana, that's something that AI can't do.

It's never going to think of something like that.

So this is a way for you not only to have better, stronger writing, it's a way for you to really stand out with all of this slop hitting the market.

And all you have to do is take the time during revision to really focus on your word choice.

And if your word choice is building the feeling, the vibe, the atmosphere of the world and making sure your story has a consistent emotional resonance.

And this is something that's pretty cool too.

Going back to the sunset, you might have a character that starts off very, very dark, but as they start to face things within themselves, maybe their outlook changes.

So you're starting to lighten the expression through the book and maybe brighten the prose a bit.

Instead of staying in that dark place, it allows you some different ways to show character development.

It also writing mystery gives you a couple of cool little tools that you can use when you're hiding clues through the story.

If you're doing like an old school mystery where they should be able to solve it before or, you know, by the time the detective does in the book.

Yeah.

So just some things to Play with.

I hope this helped.

This is one of those things that when I really learned how to do it and I learned how to spot things, it had a massive impact on my writing.

Full disclosure, I am still a massive Scooby Doo fan and my son has started watching it and I'm so excited to go back and watch all of these cartoons with him.

But I just love that story.

And in going through and really setting the tone, choosing the right words and fixing my prose and getting rid of the cliches and getting rid of the weak writing, I was really able to bring some of that fun spookiness from horror into this crime book.

And I really like the balance there.

I think that's where I'm going to live for a while in my writing and my stories.

I just, I really enjoy it and I might, I don't know, I might go as dark as doing something similar to Alex North's Whisper man series.

If you haven't read those, check them out.

They're amazing.

It's a fantastic bridge between horror and crime writing.

It's just, God, I love those books.

All right, so my writing goals, I am sticking at the thousand words per day that's going really well as I'm going through the rewrites on Dangerous Whispers and, and I'm going to keep that this week.

I might take it up a bit in the coming weeks because I want to get this thing done.

And with that I've launched the Discord server.

So that's where I'm doing live writing sprints.

If you enjoy the live writing sprints, if you enjoy talking to, hanging out with other authors.

This is a new community that I've started.

The link will be down in the show notes if you want to join.

It takes us off of Facebook and off of YouTube, away from the distractions and the ads and the trash with social media and just makes a nice little community for writers where we can do live writing sessions.

And then I have different text forums similar to the old chat rooms that we used to have where we talk about things, writing.

There's a horror writers, a crime writers forum.

I have a place for upcoming guests.

I'll list them in the, in that section.

And if you have any questions for authors, editors, people that are coming on the show, you can ask those there and then I will ask them when they come on the show.

And then we also have the, the voice and video channel for, for writing sprints in there.

It's a whole little self contained community.

Jen, thank you for joining.

We have a writing sprint coming up this Wednesday.

That's Wednesday the 9th at 11pm Eastern Time.

And again, just click that link down in the show notes to sign up on Discord or head over to killerpros.com and sign up there by clicking on the Discord logo.

And yeah, and I am working through getting Dangerous Whispers done.

I did not like the ending.

It just didn't land well with me.

So I'm going back through and changing it.

I really like the direction now and I'm excited to get that out.

I really want to get this done because I want to do Book two.

What I've got planned is a closed circle mystery for book two in a very creepy old haunted mansion.

And I want to get that out because it's a it's just a nice blend of some horror tropes along with murder mystery thriller.

So if you want more information on that, head over to tannerruetledgebooks.com you can sign up for the newsletter and get updates on my stories.

Different things to go along here with the podcast with writing, craft and things that are coming up.

And monthly, a special edition of the Whisper Hollow Gazette so you can keep up on what's happening there and that really weird small town.

All right guys, thanks so much.

Join me over on the Discord and until next time, enjoy the process.