Opinions?

[queenoftheskies]

I receive a weekly e-mail newsletter from Creative Screenwriting. They always have quotes at the top from writers and screenwriters.

I love the quotes. There have been some good ones.

One of the quotes in today's newsletter was from Stephen King.

"Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word.
There are no exceptions to this rule."
– Stephen King

I often see writers using big, sophisticated words.

I often compare myself to them and think my writing is too simple and unsophisticated.

Am I stupid? I don't think so. I have a college degree. Do I know big words? Yes. And, I know how to use them. I just tend to write in a pretty straight-forward manner. No convoluted phrases. No purple prose.

So, it's interesting to me to see a quote like that from Stephen King, someone who is such a big name writer.

How do you folks feel about it? What does that quote mean to you?

Comments

[lizziebelle.livejournal.com]

I think that writers who use big words like that are just being pretentious. It's the literary equivalent of drinking tea with your pinky raised.