What I really mean to say...

Yes, let's talk about word choice for a moment. It's actually kind of a broad topic (word confusion, passive verbs, unfortunated imagery), so we'll see how far we get.

First, let's talk about word confusion. There are many excellent resources for not mixing up your words, and very poor reasons for continuing to do so. I think there are a couple of basic ways in which word confusion comes about: one, the words are homonyms, and you just can't keep them straight. Some have closely related meanings. Homonyms can often be corrected by simply pronouncing the word aloud and stressing the confusing syllable. "The sun effected my tan." Really? Well, I suppose so, since one of the meanings of "effect" is "cause" or "create." But in this case, you probably mean "affected," and if you'll just read the two sentences aloud, you'll figure that out. Imminent and eminent are two others, although they don't get confused nearly as often as they ought to, because they aren't USED as often as they ought (to be). Digression: see the "to be" in parentheses? We usually leave that sort of thing off the end of our sentences. If you'd add things like that (logical conclusions, that is) to your sentences, you'd probably stop confusing words like "me" and "I."

Other frequently confused words: to and too (fortunately, "two" doesn't come into play much!). "Too" means also, as well ... you don't go too a restaurant, and you don't go to the restaurant, to. They're, there, and their. Oh, God, and while I'm thinking about it, let's .... no, let's don't. There's a whole post on the proper use of the apostrophe. Back to word confusion. "They're" is clearly an abbreviation of the phrase "they are." Therefore, when you mean "they are," you can use "they're," but not "there." "Their" is a possessive. That's enough for anyone. It doesn't need to have any other aspects. "Their plans went awry when they saw the man standing there, looking at them, thinking 'they're tourists.'"

Secondly, word confusion comes into play when you are trying to make your writing sound smarter. Yeah. Skip it. Or look it up. If you have a character who is exceptionally erudite, and you need the more unusual words to firm up the characterization, have an English teacher or well-read friend check your vocabulary use. (Note: if you are that friend, you obviously don't need my suggestions, so you can go ahead and skip this post in favor of something more interesting than vocabulary lessons.) If you have to look up the meaning of "erudite," you should probably do that as well. I frequently read stories that tempt me to quote the guy from the Princess Bride: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

In the same way, word confusion happens when you're trying--desperately!--to find a synonym, any synonym, because someone (a critique partner, an editor, a judge) has told you you've used the word "remarkable" six times in the same paragraph. So you look for a word that gets your point across, and it doesn't, not really (see quote above).

One last note: not so much on word confusion as on POV/description. Often I read entries--and sometimes published novels--where the description includes something that the POV character cannot possibly have noticed, but the author chooses to describe it within the POV character's experience. "He looked across the room into her beautiful blue eyes and instantly fell in love." First, "he" isn't going to fall in love at first sight. Lust, sure. But it ain't going to be her eyes he's looking at. But I digress (yes, again). Even if he's an "eye" man, I want you to try an experiment yourself. Look at someone you don't know across a room, and tell me what color his/her eyes are. Especially when it's dark. Especially when there's so much else going on, the fact that you noticed this person's eyes at all is a small miracle.

Go ahead, I'll wait.