If writing were exactly the same as talking then everyone would be a coherent and interesting writer. But when you’re in a conversation you rely a lot on your interlocutor, filling in the gaps for you. In dialogue, it’s amazing what complicated ideas you can get across in a series of incomplete sentences, circumlocution and gesticulation. (Anyone who has lived in a foreign language understands this.) Writing is different.
In writing, I have noticed that the authors I admire most have a wealth of highly specific words at their disposal. Of all these specific words, verbs impress me the most.
- …spent the evening shambling happily around the tranquil streets…
- …she jounced the baby on her lap…
- In the morning, chastened with a hangover…
- … left me with a strong urge to strafe someone in a cornfield from a low-flying aeroplane… (Strafing is the practice of attacking ground targets from low-flying aircraft.)
- … says one of the nurses to an old girl who is braying with her spoon on the tray that fastens her in… (Bray: grind: reduce to small pieces or particles by pounding or abrading; “grind the spices in a mortar”; “mash the garlic”. It also means to laugh loudly, like a donkey, but I figured there must be another meaning for it after reading that sentence.)
- grubbing about in a shed
- herons, banking and soaring in the sky (the sideways tilt of an aircraft or bird – when turning in flight)
- I glomped awkwardly out of the shallows and sank into the dry sand next to her. (Glomp: to embrace enthusiastically, but here used more metaphorically than that, to suggest a kind of awkward embracing of sea water.)
I think my fascination with ‘word collections’ comes from learning foreign language. But what if I were to put as much time into learning, really learning, my own native tongue?
Advertisement
