If you want to be a good writer, there’s a lot more than having a big lexicon at your disposal. Becoming a walking thesaurus does not make you better at using words to their best effect. However, limiting your vocabulary tends to have the effect of limiting the room that your brain has to explore, as well. As such, here are some excellent ways to expand the dictionary in your brain and to keep sharpening your skills.
Pick out a word a day
It’s a simple one, but it’s an effective one. There is plenty of word of the day feeds, you can find them on Twitter, subscribe to them on RSS, have them email you, or even download a word a day app. Whatever the case, it gets you looking at and engaging with new words. You can even go a little further and give yourself the challenge of writing a page-long story that makes use of that word at least a couple of times so you really get to chewing on how it should be used.
Read more widely
This is really going back to the basics of being a good writer. If you stay in the lane you’re comfortable with, you’re going to pick up the vocabulary and writing habits of the writers that you love. Developing your own style is all about taking in influences from all over and seeing what sticks. It also gets you experiencing language of all kinds, which will naturally lead to you finding some words that get you looking up the dictionary, which is always good.
Play Words with Friends
Playing games might sound like more of a way to goof off and avoid writing, but this particular game, which involves finding words from unsorted piles of letters (it’s basically online Scrabble) can be more useful than you might think. It gets you thinking about words, including words that might not normally come to mind. Even using a word unscrambler can be useful. It might not be the most honest way to win a game, but it can help you come face to face with new words, which is more the objective, after all.
Rewrite your own stuff
With the above tips, you should then go over your own writing and try to rewrite it. Even pieces you haven’t looked at in a long time. For one, looking over those pieces, you can often pick up flourishes and language that have since fallen out of your use but might still be useful. But more importantly, it forces you to think of other ways to write roughly the same set of actions, dialogue, and so on. It’s not always going to result in the most readable material, but that’s not the point. The point is to get used to making use of that expanding vocabulary.
Once more, knowing more words doesn’t make you smarter, nor a better writer. It is, however, a step towards sharpening your writing skills and getting a better understanding of the scope of your creativity.
