If there’s one thing that irks me, it’s applying rules to creative endeavors.
I’m also not much for taking things out of context. Like this.
Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. — Stephen King
A lot of writers treat King’s advice on writing like a bible and, like a lot of Bible carriers, they often take things over-literally and take quotes completely out of context.
This is an example of both.
The Quote
Is it true? Is any word you have to look up in a thesaurus the wrong word? Of course not.
However, this quote is from 1988, and a healthy, 40-something Stephen King may have had a sharper mind than a 66-year-old man who nearly died after being hit by a van. For my own part, I know that I sometimes have to search for a word–I know the word; I just can’t remember it right now. A thesaurus will aid my sometimes bemused mind in recalling that word.
And if it were true, are there really no exceptions to the rule? Of course not.
Just like there’s no crying in baseball, there are no hard and fast rules in creative activity. That’s why it has the word “creative” in it. We break rules. We try new things. Often, we fail, but we try them out to see.
The Context
King wrote the statement in the ’80s in his essay “Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully – in Ten Minutes.” The statement was included in the section entitled “Never look at a reference book while doing a first draft.” Yes, first draft. In reading the entire quote (included below), it is clear that he means that looking things up in encyclopedias, dictionaries, and thesauruses will only get in the way. When writing the first draft, don’t stop to look up a word. Use the word or spelling you have and look it up later. If you are at a loss for a fact, put in a placeholder (like I describe in this post). But don’t stop writing, don’t lose that momentum. Keep going. Keep writing that first draft!
King’s especial dislike of the thesaurus is patent, and with cause. The thesaurus has been the Devil’s handmaiden in the creation of uncounted literary abominations. Thesauruses lead to overblown prose, sentences bloated with tumid phrases, and plain old errors.
Once, in a group slush-reading for a magazine, we came across the sentence, “It had a caste smell.” We read it aloud and scratched our heads at it a bit until it dawned on us. The author had used the thesaurus. He wanted a synonym for rank (“It had a rank smell.”), found synonyms for rank, but not for rank=stinky…he got the synonyms for rank=echelon. Rank = echelon = caste. Thus, “It had a caste smell.”
Hilarity ensued. Okay, you had to be there.
The Upshot
The thesaurus is a tool that can help a faulty memory remember one of the thousands of words we have in our heads. It should not be used to find a word we don’t already know, and only rarely (if ever) to find a word that’s just…better. But using it while writing the first draft is counter-productive.
King was not speaking literally about thesauruses. He was using hyperbole to make his point. Don’t let the thesaurus (or any reference work) stop you during your first draft. Don’t do it. Don’t.
The Whole Quote
5. Never look at a reference book while doing a first draft
You want to write a story? Fine. Put away your dictionary, your encyclopedias, your World Almanac, and your thesaurus. Better yet, throw your thesaurus into the wastebasket. The only things creepier than a thesaurus are those little paperbacks college students too lazy to read the assigned novels by around exam time. Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. You think you might have misspelled a word? O.K., so here is your choice: either look it up in the dictionary, thereby making sure you have it right – and breaking your train of thought and the writer’s trance in the bargain – or just spell it phonetically and correct it later. Why not? Did you think it was going to go somewhere? And if you need to know the largest city in Brazil and you find you don’t have it in your head, why not write in Miami, or Cleveland? You can check it … but later. When you sit down to write, write. Don’t do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.
–from The Writer’s Handbook, Sylvia K. Burack, ed., Writer, Inc., 1988
[…] *This quote from Stephen King is a little bit out of context. It’s referring more to a first draft than writing overall, but the point stands that getting to complicated will spoil the point. Here’s a good reference that explains the meaning of this quote better than I can: https://seattleauthor.com/2013/07/24/king-vs-thesaurus/ […]
LikeLike
Spot on Kurt. There’s nothing wrong with thesaurus use once you have a completed draft that you’re editing. I use a thesaurus fairly frequently, but never to find a fancy word for the sake of using a fancy word. I mostly use it when I find I’ve already used the same word dozens of times in the MS and need an alternative.
LikeLike
[…] « King vs Thesaurus […]
LikeLike
I got used to ignoring word highlighting misspells years ago because of British spelling, mostly. I leave it active though as I find it useful, I just make a decision quickly and act accordingly, frequently ignoring that, as well as grammar checkers. Sometimes those are helpful but I not infrequently twist the rules or ignore them entirely, or create a word, but you do have to be careful about that one.
As for looking words up to use, or readers having to look up words you use in order to know what you are saying, I’ve always seen two sides to that. I agree not to befuddle your reader without good intent, you do want the text to flow for them.
But you also have readers who need to learn more words. So you guesstimate as best you can for YOUR audience. I also think it is a writer’s job to enlighten their readers, for or against their wills. I would like every reader I have to walk away having learned a new concept, view things in a new way, learning at least one new word. It’s not always true in my writings, I don’t always do that. It’s an ideal that I hold in the back of my mind. I was told as a kid in school by a favorite teacher that you should never use the same word twice when you write something.
Ridiculous, untenable, undo-able, yes, but it’s the concept that holds true. Try not to overuse your words. I’ve read writer’s who annoy the hell out of me using the same word over and over when another word could enhance the description and rather than maintaining the status quo in their hopefully not “vomitous” (Peter Lorre as the Raven in “The Raven” to Vincent Price’s character) stream of words in trying to make the reading experience “smooth”. I also believe change is required to maintain the status quo. Anyway, I just find it annoying and I find that I start stopping on the word each time it comes up yet again, the next time, over and over.
We learn the rules so we know how and when we can break them and in doing so, get away with “murder”. When I started Karate as a kid I complained to a black belt about a move in our style. He said it was our style, once I mastered that style, then I could change things as I saw fit. The authors who are the most creative in breaking the rules, I find those are the writers I tend to cherish the most.
Or I could just be wrong about everything….wouldn’t be the first time.
LikeLike
I don’t see it as part of the job to educate, but if it happens, great. I’ve worked to expand my vocabulary (mostly through reading) and it is reflected in my count of unique/low-repetition words. I had a post, back in the “The View from Here” series about word use/overuse and the “echo” effect. Some words are “invisible” (like “said”) while other words the reader will retain in memory. Use “flashing” twice on the same page and it’ll trigger an echo (as happened in a research book I read last week).
Learn the rules so you know when and how best to break them… That’s a standard for writers, blues/jazz musicians, and painters, IMHO.
LikeLike
Yeah… I think that works better on paper than in Word. That little red squiggly underline that tells you you’ve misspelt something but doesn’t know what you meant to write is highly distracting and an effective derailment of being in that writing groove. For me, anyway. 😉
And dammit, Firefox, misspelt isn’t misspelt!!
LikeLike
Eliza, you can turn that off, y’know. And if I had to choose between red-squiggly and AutoCorrect (aka, the Devil’s handiwork) I’d take red-squiggly. And I really cannot recommend my bracket-interrogative-bracket (<?>) highly enough as a tool to keep writing.
Oh, and you obviously read too many British novels. Misspelt, indeed. The one I always find creeping into my work is “whilst.”
LikeLike
I’ve discovered I have a very natural penchant for a more British English than could otherwise be accounted for, so it must be my early exposure to British literature.
And oh yes, I would throw my computer out the window if it tried to auto-correct the way some phones do!
LikeLike
I blame Monty Python.
LikeLike