Writing Prompt 3: Impressive Vocabulary

As a writer, words are the tools of your trade, so you need to have lots of the best words you can get and you need to know how to use them, the way a chef needs to have the most high-tech cooking equipment available. So, instead of using sad, use melancholy, or use serendipitous instead of lucky - it sounds much better, but only if you use it right; the true skill is using it without sounding melodramatic (for example, unless you character is particularly posh, they wouldn't say "Are you alright? You seem melancholy. You're not very serendipitous, are you?"). In my experience, using impressive vocabulary works best in third-person narratives with a sophisticated style or voice.

So far, Ross has posted three Weird Word Of The Week entries. They are spatulamancy, regicide and quinquereme. Now, include all three of those words in a piece of writing. Go on, I dare you.

And if you want a further challenge, look up three words in the dictionary which you didn't already know the meaning of and get a friend to do the same, then swap, so that they get your words and you get their words. Then include these words in the same piece of writing. You could even try not giving each other the definitions of these words when you swap them - so that you have to guess their meanings when you use them!

This was an exercise I did in creative writing club a few years ago, and if you are interested, these are the words listed on the sheet we were given:

Melancholy - sad

Luminescent - producing a soft light

Effervescent - fizzy/lively/vivacious person

Taciturn - uncommunicative

Cacophony - din/harsh noises

Eloquent - fluent/smooth speech; well-spoken, persuasive

Loquacious - talkative

Sagacious - wise

Lugubrious - gloomy (weather)

Serendipitous - lucky

Grandiose - extravagantly imposing in appearance or style

Disconsolately - unhappily

Visage - face

Virulent - poisonous

Disquieting - disturbing

Remember: dictionaries and thesauruses are your friends! Happy writing!