I've been writting alot more recently, but i feel so restricted by my vocabulary to the point where i really cant express words to describe things as well as i would hope to. its times like these where i wish i payed closer attention to english classes. What could i do to help out my word usage? read more books? get a book of poems? read the dictonary?
just reading more books will help loads i'm in a sort of writers block myself and i'm just reading everything i can and in regards to reading the dictionary, useful yes to an extent, but very tedious i did it on a dare from my father years ago during the summer...i could have spent that time swimming
read. do crosswords. when you come across words you dont know, dont just skip over them, but look them up. i dont know why i am giving advice. vocabulary is one area i'm awful at.
Yeah, man, read books. Doesn't matter what it is... poetry, novels, ProTools manuals... well, maybe not ProTools manuals, but definitely novels.
My voluptuous word usage has let me to extraordinary accomplishments in the magnitudes of literature. Well, bah... fuck it. If you want to truly connect with your readers, then use words that they can identify with... using some pretty words is always good, but I just can't take an author who makes sure to use "unknown" words in his writing seriously... you should have seen this one essay I had to revise in writing class in college... man... this kid was THE pseudo-intellectual... he went out of his way to ass rape a thesaurus. I just wrote "I can't understand half of this shit" in big letters on the paper and gave it back to him... I am well read, but an over usage of big words gets to me. This has nothing to do with you though, I'm just ranting on the topic. To answer your question... do what my English teacher in 5th grade used to do... he would learn a new word off the dictionary everyday and use it that day in conversation... easy and it works.
i dont wanna be a pseudo-intellectual at all. some of the best writting that i have liked had words i understood very well, but just words i dont hear very often i suppose. i wish i could concentrate and actually read a book :/ i'll invest in a dictionary and do that, sounds like a good idea.
Have you tried biographies, Paul? Sometimes, for me at least, it takes a while to get into a novel, but biographies seem easy to get into. Give it a shot, if you haven't. Try reading about a band or musician you love. I've been meaning to get a bunch of those 33 1/3 books about classic albums--there are a ton I want to read.
I always try and find something on wiki that I never knew before, at least once a day. Like Nixon's supposed gay lover... Bebe Rebozo or whatever. I actually thought about naming a record label after him... I like finding concepts, too.
I usually just read the dictionary...and I visit dictionary.com a lot and look at the words of the day and stuff. Oh, and you could just read books more... any kind of books, really, and once you come across a word you don't recognize, look it up and try and remember it. It works for me.
Entry: Regular Synonyms: accordant, alternating, arranged, automatic, classified, congruous, consistent, consonant, constant, cyclic, dependable, efficient, established, even, exact, expected, fixed, flat, formal, harmonious, in order, invariable, level, measured, mechanical, methodical, momentary, ordered, organized, patterned, periodic, precise, probable, punctual, rational, recurrent, regulated, rhythmic, routine, serial, set, smooth, standardized, stated, steady, straight, suant, successive, symmetrical, systematic, uniform The above cleverly pilfered from a thesaurus website
Just read loads of books, i've always been a bibliophile and as a consequence have a great vocabulary
