Stephen King says in On Writing that you must be confident about your word choice and that your vocabulary develops over time when you read, so you should no be wasting time looking up "better" words. He encourages all writers to be more direct when they write a sentence, rather than be so rich of huge vocabulary words. In doing this we say what we actually mean rather than use the word's "cousin". I do not struggle with word choice in my writing. When I write I get this brainstorm of an idea and I go with it. I keep writing every thought that comes to my head and after I get my ideas out, I go back into the paper and modify them. I also sometimes read sentences aloud to myself as I write them to process my thoughts, and I often change words in my writing by that method. Although, I never seem to have trouble finding the right vocabulary to use, my spelling is a completely different story.
I enjoyed this piece a lot. It was really humorous and witty and I felt that it addressed the point with great clarity. The examples he gave with simple excerpts from famous authors, on how writing could be simple, is extremely helpful. It does not only prove King's purpose, but it also instills in the reader's own writing, and makes them believe that they can write well even without knowing fancy vocabulary words. I also thought his example with the different ways to say the "John" sentence was very funny. It also demonstrated a very good point that sometimes being dirty and less proper with vocabulary makes your writing piece more interesting and entertaining for people to read. It also grabs the reader's attention and makes them focus on the piece, and created an informal and comfortable relationship between the reader and the writer.
No comments:
Post a Comment