Writing Tips 2 - Synonyms

Here is my 2nd tip for you guys, Tip: Synonyms.

One of the easiest, little-to-no-effort ways to improve your writing is to gather synonyms. Reading something can get boring if you only ever use the same 9 words to describe things.

The repetition is holding you back. There are so many more adjectives to use. With just a single word, you can describe what you mean so much better, and the reader's vision will line up more with what you're trying to get across.

For example: Pain shot up his arm. Vs, Tingles shot up his arm.

Very different picture, right? Only one word changes, and yet the entire scene you imagined is different.

The good news is, I have a simple method to keep words fresh and impactful without sacrificing too much brain power to remembering all of them, and it only involves 2 things.

1) A document/place where I can write them down, that I like to call a 'Word Bank'.

I keep the words along with a short concise description, usually taken straight from google (or a dictionary).

Over the years it's involved into having more -- optional -- complexity and now I have categories for things like my fav/most used words, and divided into categories of how the words make a scene feel.

For example: Fuming is under 'Rage', Bubbly is under 'Happy', 'Puzzled' is under confusion, and so on.

And 2) This website: wordhippo.com (https://www.wordhippo.com/ ) is fantastic. I use it all the time. I have this personal "rule" of not using the same descriptive word more than once every ___ number of paragraphs. So when I find a word that's become repetitive, I just look it up in the synonyms section and take my pick of whatever word sounds right. Often times I use google (by simply typing 'define ____') to check the exact definition -- even if I already know it -- to see which fits best.