Don Keith is a man to be reckoned with. Don Keith is one of the best writers out there today. Don Keith is my good friend and we are linked by our mutual love of writing and the fabulous hobby we both share — ham radio. His call sign is N4KC and mine is K9YNF.
When I invited Don to contribute a Guest Post for the second anniversary of LongShortStories, he didn’t even hesitate, as busy as he is these days. He even offered to contribute an autographed copy of one of his recent books, THE ICE DIARIES, for our prize drawing.
If there is one thing Don knows about, it is words. So let’s let Don share with us his practical wisdom. Friends … I give you Don Keith.
Words
By Don Keith
How much do you think about words? Not much, I wager. You string them together, speak them, and convey some message to a particular person or to anybody who can hear them. You sit at a computer or whip out the cell phone and type a message—for many or for one special someone—and then hit “Send,” launching those words off on their way. We utter, speak, shout, sing, spit, whisper, and coo them. We rattle them off with little thought or we choose them carefully, peeling them off like the slimmest slice of cheese. We scratch them with a knife in tree bark, leave a trail of graphite on paper, or form pixels on a phosphorescent screen. Still, most of us toss them around as if they had no power beyond the simple meaning we think we are imparting.
Not true. Words have more power than most of us could ever imagine. “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me.” Sure! Who among us have not tossed out words at another with whom we were upset—maybe initiated them more harshly than we would ever have had we not been so…well…out of control of our words…and thus caused wasp-sting hurt? Or told someone we loved them for expediency and then scatted when the person for whom they were intended actually took them seriously?
Shakespeare captured the human condition in the words of the children of two feuding families, two young people who just happened to be in love with each other. President Roosevelt sent men off to battle and launched unrestricted warfare with, “This is a day that will live in infamy.” Hemingway, in the sparsest of prose, showed bravery and cowardice in his flawed characters. Sinclair Lewis peeled back the veil and revealed corruption with words that changed how things were.
Carefully crafted words, arranged like a necklace or tiara, can sparkle and glow, enhance beauty, inspire loyalty, incite rebellion. Rhyme them, sing them, chant them or sign them to add to their emotional power and persuasion.
Choose them carefully to paint a picture. Can you better see someone who is “watching her boyfriend walk away,” or someone who “cranes her neck, stands on her toes like a ballerina braced against the splintered bridge railing, trying to catch the last sunlit glimpse of his shock of wheat straw hair?” An old man can “walk quickly to the mailbox and back.” But he can also “shuffle his feet so hard he raises little dust devils in the dirt-and-gravel driveway. He is hurrying to the rusty old mailbox as if the bills and circulars might evaporate before he gets there to claim them. He drops the rusty door, withdraws the mail, and then considers each one of them for a moment, ignoring the cars that pass by where he stands at the edge of the pavement. Finally, he realizes the letter he is looking for is not there, and then starts back again to the sanctuary of the screened porch. But now he moves slowly, his head down, the windowed envelopes and garish junk mail stuffed in the pocket of his overalls.”
Does that mean that more words are better? Of course not. At least not necessarily. Better words are better. Descriptive words. Words that put a picture in the mind of the reader or listener. Is it clearer for a lady to “walk” or to “sashay?” For a child to “cry” or to “squall?” For a dog to “drink his water” or to “slurp up the water?” Is it more powerful for a minister to “preach a sermon” or to “fling salvation at the congregation with fistfuls of fire and brimstone?” Or to “lull the crowd into a stupor, his words a humming, numbing sing-song.”
But you get the point. If you are writer or speaker, think about the words you use. Choose them carefully to achieve the purpose you intend. If you are a reader or listener, seek out those who use words wisely, effectively, even sparsely. You will be the better for it.
The singing group the Bee Gees said it quite well in a song called, fittingly, “Words:”
You think that I don’t even mean a single word I say. It’s only words, and words are all I have, to take your heart away.
Don Keith is the author of over twenty books. He writes both fiction and non-fiction, and his submarine thriller Firing Point, which has not yet been published, will soon be a major motion picture from Original Films. His web site is www.donkeith.com.
RSS 2.0 Feed