Don’t Abuse The Thesaurus!
The thesaurus is used to spice up your story. But make sure you use it correctly!
When I’m reading unedited articles and stories written by my friends and my clients, I often find them abusing words just because they sounds right. Quite often, these little synonyms have different meanings, and can totally do a 180 to your story.
For example, I once read a story that had something similar to this:
” The monster came at me with sharp, drooling teeth. Its eyes, oh its mortifying eyes, frightened me to the deepest core of my being. “
The word I am examining is “mortifying”.Mortifying describes something that brings about embarrassment and shame. So if you all of a sudden tripped and fell in the middle of the busy streets of New York, and have your face land on a pile of poo a dog coincidentally left for you, you will feel mortified.
In the quote above, the context of the story with this word is incorrect. How can eyes filled with embarrassment and shame bring about such a frightening feeling? I think the writer was looking for a word along the lines of “terrifying” or “frightening” or even “scary”. But mortifying is not correct.
The same can be said about a lot of stories I’ve read. Remember: Don’t abuse the thesaurus! Have a professional check your work to make sure everything is right.
Or you can also email me. I am ALWAYS glad to help.
May your joy in writing lead you to happiness,
Jay
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January 10th, 2012 at 3:41 pm
The person who wrote this must be mortified that you exposed them like that lol.
January 10th, 2012 at 11:03 pm
@PHILLY DREAMER: Haha, don’t worry I didn’t tell them I wrote about it. It’s anonymous anyway.