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My POV
Brian A. Wilson
Book Review: Roget's International Thesaurus
There's a book on your shelf (I hope) that you don't use nearly enough.
Roget's International Thesaurus lists just over one-quarter of a million interrelated words and phrases.
This book can increase the quality of your writing tremendously, immensely, vastly and stupendously.
How?
By helping you find and create fresh phrases and descriptions. For example, the next one of you who writes a script describing the female protagonist as sexy, beautiful, shapely or brilliant will be smacked, whomped, paddled, lambasted, clobbered, horsewhipped, dressed down and possibly give what-for.
We writers tend to get lazy. We start using shorthand to get across our ideas. That may be our shorthand, the shorthand of other writers or the prevailing "industry standard" shorthand. The sexy, brilliant female protagonist is such a construction.
Don't do it.
This is an easy opportunity to improve your writing. Memorable, professional writers, be they Raymond Chandler or Steve Zaillian, think up new descriptions and engaging, fresh phrases. They select fresh words to make a trite setting or character feel fresh.
And you have the same tool at your disposal as these legends of writing: the thesaurus.
But it won't do you any good sitting on the shelf. Next time you're at a writing crossroads, ready to illuminate a character, setting or bit of action, pull your thesaurus down off the shelf, crack it open and let it lead you to better writing.
Keep writing.
BW
LA
transtexan@hotmail.com
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