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Vocabulary activities?

Apart from insistent and consistent writing, what other practices or activities do writers engage in to be able to access their vocabulary and selves in order to write/express ideas more fluently?

  • What are some of these things known to have been done by famous writers?

  • Answer:

    Outside actually writing, which is the most important thing to make a writer better, writers need to read. A lot. If you don't like reading, you have no business being a writer. I mean it. No shortcuts here. You should have been reading at least one and possibly four or five books a week since you were in middle school at the latest. You can start later in life, but you will have a lot of catching up to do. There is no way to achieve facility, increase your vocabulary and become comfortable with the written word if you have not read a lot. Those of us who passionately wish to be successful, professional writers, want to be writers because we admire other writers. We appreciate the artistry, the commitment and the sheer power that good writers have, whether to entertain, to teach, or connect to readers nearby, around the world and for centuries after we are gone. This is what it means to enter into the world of writing. If you want to be a writer because you think you have a good story to tell but you haven't spent much time reading, you are way behind. You better get reading right away and just keep doing it until you think you might be able to try writing yourself. If you want to be a writer because it looks like writers have an easy life, just sitting at home with a laptop until somebody offers them a big check for their first manuscript, plus another check for the movie rights to the Academy Award winning script based on their best selling novel, you are going to be very disappointed with the writing life. So, the answer is, read. All the best writers do.

Alison Bennett at Quora Visit the source

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I think that listening is also very important for writers, especially listening to people talk. I love it when dialogue carries a story and the descriptions and explanations are pretty much left between the lines. It helps to be a student of the way people look in action: observing their movements, the clothes they wear, and their body language. It is valuable to soak up different weather conditions, modes of transportation, everything. All of this is done away from the keyboard but it is not casual, it is done with serious purpose.

Michael Dixon

Benjamin Franklin founded, edited, printed/typeset and wrote for several newspapers.

Len Gould

There's an online course on futurelearn with The Open University on writing that starts in a week if you're interested. Hemingway wrote just after sunrise to avoid distraction and stopped when he knew what would happen next, so that the next day he knew he would be able to write and get his 'juice' flowing. This article details the inspirations of many famous writers: http://m.huffpost.com/us/slideshow/306562?entry_id=3540905&slide=15 Everybody has their own stimulus. I got advised to use a random word generator, to take maybe 7 words and make a short poem (or just some writing) out of them - and actually make it good. It really gets your brain working creatively; while youre focusing on this random mix of words and trying to find meaning and metaphor half your mind is brewing what you really want to write. In terms of vocab, try checking out the http://dictionary.com words of the day, theyre mostly random words youve probably never heard of before, or rarely, and can be quite inspiring. Sometimes all you need is a word that expresses perfectly what you want to explore. Reading seems to inspire a lot of people, especially if you read writers you can relate to.

Anonymous

Almost as important as insistent and consistent writing is insistent and consistent reading. Regular reading will increase your vocabulary, provide examples of different ways to express ideas, and give you a clearer idea of what is or isn't 'good' writing. Stephen King, in his memoir 'On Writing', repeatedly stresses the need for continual reading, and lists the 100 or so best books that he read over the 3-4 years he was writing it.

Jason MacDonald

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