This might be unpopular but I’m not going to use simpler vocabulary in my writing if it’s out of character for the narrator. If my POV character is a botanist, he’s going to call a plant by its name. If you don’t know what it is you can either Google it or move on just knowing it’s a plant of some sort.
I don’t like this trend of readers being angry that not everything is 100% understandable for them. I want my characters to be believable as people and sometimes people use words people outside of their field will not understand. That’s not a bad thing.
You don’t have to understand every word to get the gist of what’s happening. I’m not going to slow down an action scene to describe every weapon because someone might not know them by name. They can just assume it’s a weapon because that makes sense in the context of the scene.
I just had a debate with myself over using the word mezzanine, wondering if I should describe it instead. Ultimately I decided the character would call it a mezzanine, and therefore readers could look up a new word if they didn’t know.
It’s how I learned words like myriad as a seven year old reading Lord of the Rings for the first time, why would I steal that experiance from someone else by simplifying language?
I don’t know about y'all, but books are how i know my vocabulary in the first place
my favorite thing relevant to this is when a dumb character uses regional or obscure words completely casually, but i have to look them up. To me it’s a big weird word, but to the silly town drunk in a story what else are you supposed to call that thing??
anyway, read outside your culture as well, even if it’s just the state/city/country next door that you’ve never been to. you will expand your vocabulary substantially.
and like … having different characters speak differently is good. It means they have unique voices. Characters with different backgrounds and life experiences will speak and behave differently - if they don’t, you’re not doing a good job as a writer.
And yes, you should work to make your writing accessible, but that doesn’t mean making it too simple.
[ID: a digital drawing of the Last Unicorn facing off against the red bull by the ocean. They encircle each other and dark clouds cover the entire sky. End ID]
“exercise will give you more energy” gets said a lot as a common piece of health advice but I think it needs to be expanded into “exercising will make you tired while you do it, and you will continue to be tired immediately afterwards, sometimes even the next day too, but over months of consistent exercise, your muscles will get stronger and therefore get less tired out by everyday activities, making you feel like day-to-day life takes less physical energy than it used to”
i think its my sacred obligation to tell yall about animals so just letting you know that apparently (according to inaturalist) theres 321 species of squirrels in the world. Yes three hundred twenty one
Well here is the indochinese spotted giant flying squirrel
And here is the zanj sun squirrel
and heres the calabrian black squirrel
and heres the bornean mountain squirrel
And this is taiwanese red and white giant flying squirrel
And here is washington ground squirrel
This is just an arbitrary sampling of squirrels from inaturalist, feel free to explore the world of squirrel diversity on your own
As for mice and rats (Muroids) there are over a thousand.
Mice you could never fathom…rats you could never imagine
