The STYLE LEXICON

The Lexicon is your repository of useful words and phrases to call upon during the course of writing your novel. It is built using expressive words that capture mood and atmosphere. For some, it's the primary tool in "world-building", a dictionary of terms used to describe your setting. The two most famous examples of this are Tolkien's Middle Earth series and Gene Rodenberry's Star Trek franchise. Tolkien went so far as to invent bits of languages such as Elvish for his series. Similarly, cast members on Star Trek had to take classes on the various technological terms of the shows. There is even a class on Conversational Klingon!

Let's admit it: "Blaster" sounds much better than "laser gun", doesn't it? "Vanquish" sounds more classical than "beat down". This is the entire point. Here, we are searching for the perfect words, not just the right ones. No matter the genre, setting, mood or atmosphere, the perfect word distinguishes the great writers from the good writers. It's the difference between striking someone with a bolt of lightning -- or handing them a lightning bug.

You'll know the perfect word when you find it. You will read the passage a thousand times and never get over how powerfully the message is sent, how strong the imagery and how enduring the scene becomes. But wouldn't it be nice to have a list of possible Perfect Words at your fingertips? Well, I can't tell you what they are. I don't even know you, much less what you're writing. You'll just have to roll up your sleeves and do it yourself. But what manner of monster would suggest such a thing without offering some way to lighten your literary load?

The idea is more of a game, really. It starts off simply enough: Pick a word and come up with ten synonyms. That's it, for now. You can do this darn near anywhere, can't you? Great, I'm glad you're coming with me on this. Now, after doing this from off the top of your head, sit down with a really good thesaurus and come up with another ten you haven't used already. Yeah, now it's getting a bit more interesting, isn't it? But is doesn't end there, foxes and hounds...

For the third phase, you'll try and come up with ten words that poetically illustrate your original word. For example, if your original word was "white", your poetic descriptor might be "leprous", which suggests a pallor to the skin. When personifying objects and events in your scenes, this could come in handy. Can you imagine describing a "white moon" as having a "leprous radiance" in a horror tale? It foreshadows something "ill" -- something wrong. It certainly doesn't sound very romantic, does it?

The next step is only twice as frightful as the first. You have to immerse yourself in your genre and its mood. You have to do research, you have to connect with and internalize that research, and always remain true to your story. It's easy to write about, say, World War II if you were actually there. We don't typically have such a luxury, to be able to actually experience our novel before writing it. But that doesn't mean we can't dive into letters written on the battlefield, or devour page after page of newspaper articles, or even read autobiographies of veterans and survivors. It depends on how real you want your story. It depends on how hard you want the images to strike your readers. In short, are you wielding the lightning, or the bug?

 

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Style Lexicon

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