An Easy Tip to Liven Up Your Writing

When I was in high school, I held the slightly-nerdy, slighty-cool position of managing editor of our school newspaper. I had a thick Thesaurus that I carried around with me. The edges were tattered, the pages curled up but that was the most used book I had in school.

Today a thesaurus is still one of my favorite tools, just now it’s the digital kind.

The 10-Minute Touch Up is a quick, weekly challenge to get you DOING, not just reading about doing. Consider it a way to touch up your blogging just 10 minutes at a time!

Challenge: Run through a draft post and liven it up using a thesaurus.

Why: A word lacking oomph? Check the thesaurus.

Need a good substitute for the plain verbs like “go” and “is”? Check the thesaurus.

Already used a certain word too many times? BAM. Thesaurus.

Using a thesaurus doesn’t mean you’re smart enough to come up with good words on your own. It means sometimes the right word can make all the difference. I mean which ones gives you a better visual… “we ate the food” or “we devoured the food”?

How to Do It

These days, I prefer to grab my phone and use my Thesaurus app. You can also visit Thesaurus.com or even just type “another word for __” in Google, like this:

Two tips for as you become a thesaurus-wielding addict:

1. Write first, THEN go back and look up words.

I wrote about the importance of writing then editing a while ago but it’s worth repeating. Stopping to look up a word puts the breaks on your train of thought. Screeeech.

Denote the word you want to change by putting a [TH] beside it then keep writing. You can then look up the words once you have your thoughts on paper. Your brain will thank you.

2. Don’t get too fancy, schmancy.

You aren’t writing a thesis paper. You’re writing a blog post. And you should speak to your audience in your true voice.

If the word doesn’t sound like something you’d typically write, choose another one. It’s a balance, for sure, but don’t get stuck using terrible words like “utilize” when you just wanna say “use” (if you don’t believe me, read this free marketing eBook called The Gobbledygook Manifesto). The manifesto is ancient in Internet times (2007), but will get those junk, empty words out of your vocab.

Your Turn

Tell me… do you use a thesaurus when you write? If not, I can tell that you guys are going to be friends already.