Don’t Let Word Choices Slow the Read

Don’t Let Word Choices Slow the Read

Once you start learning the craft of writing, the entire reading experience changes. All of a sudden (a phrase one of my editors did NOT like), you start noticing things like speaker tags. Point of view. And word choices, which is today’s topic. Sometimes word choices will clunk; sometimes they’ll trigger an, “I’ve got to borrow that one,” moment. Sometimes both.

One author seems to love the phrase “blew out a sigh.” Or there’s the dialogue tag that says,...