(no subject)

[runespoor]

God I hate how limited my vocabulary is in English.

Hate it.

10'000 words of fic to bash my skull against because god, I'm always using the same words.

HATE.

Comments

[thursday-kat.livejournal.com]

*hugs* Even though I'm a native English speaker, I often feel the same way :P Props to you for being able to write in 2 languages!!!

[runespoor7.livejournal.com]

*cliiiiiings* Yay for thesauruses, I guess?

[yoraedigress.livejournal.com]

*trailed in from hyuugacest*
...um...English is my native language and you're loads better at writing in it than me. How long have you been speaking it?

[runespoor7.livejournal.com]

Aw, thanks. I started English in school 12 years ago, but I only started really studying it (i.e.: read fics and books in English) 8 years ago. I'd say I started being able to sort-of write fics something like 6 years ago.

[yoraedigress.livejournal.com]

I ask because I'm learning a new language as well, so I can relate (a little). I think sometimes the colliquialisms -hope I spelled that right- sometimes make things difficult as a writer (or speaker) as well, because we each have our own cultures and it takes a while to learn to write from a different perspective. So until then you will reuse certain words until these colli-hoodads click for you.
But your stories all are so vivid and never sound the same imo. They are refreshing, and your ability to tell the story from the character's perspective, without reverting to first person pov is truly admirable. And you do all of this in another language.
From my point of view, you're doing an excellent job.

[outlawpoet.livejournal.com]

Hey, not everybody is a crazy-making up words-person like Shakespeare. Maybe you're meant to be a person of direct, clear vocabulary. Take heart from this exchange from probably the two greatest writers of last century:

"Hemingway," Faulkner said once, "has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."

Hemingway replied, "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use."

[runespoor7.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know it's possible to write beautifully that way. It tends not to be my favourite, especially for longer stories, though. But I hate being unable to choose how I'm going to tell my story. It's not a question of big words. Often the big words actually come more easily, because they tend to be derived from Latin and so is French, and when I'm tired enough it makes a difference in how quickly the words come.

I find myself describing the same actions (people moving, for instance) with exactly the same words. And I know there are other words, or other phrases, out there, but I have to look for them. "Sling an arm around someone's shoulder" works fine, but I never remember that "throw" works just as well unless I spend time thinking about it. I have no idea how to prevent "make a show of" from making more than one appearance. Every time I type "twitch" or "jerk", I know there's a handful of verbs I'm forgetting about again. And so on, and so forth.

And that's without counting the words that are going to come up a lot because of the things I, as a writer, tend to focus on to picture reactions, the things people are looking at or their smiles ("smirk" and "smile": I never stop feeling like I overuse them.)

tl;dr version: I'm whining.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Heh, I know the feeling. I never write without using a thesaurus, even in French.

[runespoor7.livejournal.com]

The worst is when you're starting a fic, and you wince the first time you're using one of those words you know you always fall back on, because you know there's going to be a great deal more occurences by the time you're through. Never being able to type it without either wincing or telling yourself firmly that this time, it's the word for it.