Words by Francine Prose

Dear Reader, 

To become a good writer you have to be good with words. You have to choose the absolute best word over every other word, every single time. This is my helpful way of putting the “Words” chapter of Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer in an understandable and digestible medium. With that said, it’s important to start with a quote to help you further yourself in your writing journey, “With so much reading ahead of you, the temptation might be to speed up. But in fact it’s essential to slow down and read every word. Because one important thing that can be learned by reading slowly is the seemingly obvious but oddly underappreciated fact that language is the medium we use in much the same way a composer uses notes, the way a painter uses paint. I realize it may seem obvious, but it’s surprising how easily we lose sight of the fact that words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted.” This idea is important to remember when in school especially, but at any point in your writing journey. Reading can’t be avoided, and learning from reading shouldn’t be avoided. Words are the medium in which we create art. 

One method a writer can have power over words is what they name their characters. “Calling her “grandmother” at once reduces her to her role in the family, as does the fact that her daughter-in-law is never called anything but “the children’s mother.” At the same time, the title gives her (like The Misfit) an archetypal, mythic role that elevates her and keeps us from getting too chummy with this woman whose name we never learn…” The idea that someone’s name has that much power is true, you become your name, as do your characters. Removing a name and giving them a title instead can have an impact on how they’re perceived as readers. 

“When we ask ourselves how we know as much as we know—that is, that the performance is likely to be something of an embarrassment—we notice that individual words have given us all the information we need.” Your choice of words can be the very detail that furthers the story along. That’s not to say every word needs to be perfect, but it needs to be the best possible option you could have chosen to reveal what you want to reveal. To tell, not show, the opposite of what we’ve always been told as writers. “Every page was once a blank page, just as every word that appears on it now was now always there, but instead reflects the final result of countless large and small deliberations. All the elements of good writing depend on the writer’s skill in choosing one word instead of another. And what grabs and keeps our interest has everything ro do with those choices. One way to compel yourself to slow down and stop at every word is to ask yourself what sort of information—each word choice—is conveying.” This is a helpful tip in revision, in my opinion. When you’re writing your first draft, just write until you finish it. Worry about perfecting word choice during editing, which is when you should be asking what information the word choices convey, and if that’s the tone or “vibe” you want to convey. 

In your editing process, remember to thoroughly read the writing you have before you. Print it out, hold it, write on it, highlight things. Read each word with intention and decide if that’s the best possible word to convey your message. But to do so means avoiding one thing we all do, “Skimming just won’t suffice if we hope to extract one fraction, such as the fraction above, of what a writer’s words can teach us about how to use the language. And reading quickly—for plot, for ideas, even for the psychological truths that a story reveals—can be a hindrance when the crucial revelations are in the spaces between words, in what has been left out.” Don’t skim when rereading your own work, it’s important to try and digest it like a real reader would in order to understand what you’re not saying to readers or what you’re trying to get them to figure out on their own. 

-Grace Sofia