Goodreads Authors/Readers discussion

Okay, so...I am writing a sweet-romance novel. I already have eleven chapters done, but my main problem is that I use simple words. Just to make things a bit clearer, English is not my mother language. I read a lot, write and always in search for new words to expand my vocabulary, but this is not making me a good writer or anything.
Now, getting to the point, how disappointing is for readers to use easy and common words in a book?
This probably sounds very silly, but I just want to get out of this doubt. Thank for all those who can give me a hand :D

Well, my books are often commended for being 'an easy read', so readers seem to like books they don't have to work too hard to understand. Although I think, in my case, they are using 'easy' to damn the books with faint praise... But, yes, I think there's a lot of readers who don't want to have a dictionary to hand whilst they read!

If you bill it as a light read, I wouldn't think it would matter. My beta readers actually had me simplifying my book because they thought it made it a better read, and they were probably right. If you're writing science fiction or a spy novel, you might have problem, but a light romance, probably not.

Do not despair, G.C. Ernest Hemingway was renowned for his simple words and simple sentences. Here's a simple sentence explanation:

1. I like apple pie.
2. I don't know how to bake, so I buy my sweets.
3. I enjoyed the apple pie that you bought for me.
4. The dog lived in the garden, but the cat, which was smarter, lived inside the house.

The simple sentence in example 1 contains one clause.

Example two has two clauses (I don't know how to bake and I buy my sweets), combined into a single sentence with the coordinating conjunction so.

In example 3, I enjoyed the apple pie is an independent clause, and that you bought for me is a dependent clause; the sentence is thus complex.

In sentence 4, The dog lived in the garden and the cat lived inside the house are both independent clauses; which was smarter is a dependent clause."

Simple sentences generally use simple words... ;o)

I think you can have nice writing flow and complex sentences without using 'big' words. There's no reason why you can't convey complex ideas, emotions, and situations using simple words. Most of us do it every day in our conversations.

R.A. wrote: "I think you can have nice writing flow and complex sentences without using 'big' words. There's no reason why you can't convey complex ideas, emotions, and situations using simple words. Most of us..."

Agree, R.A. Complex sentences need not contain complex, little used words that drive many to the dictionary.

My attempt to relieve G.C's doubts may have gone a step further than necessary... ;o)

Depends on the simple words. If you use vague words, like 'nice' or 'handsome', you might get some flak, but I think authors have been criticized more often for using extravagant or archaic words when simple words would've sufficed.

My own prose is sparse and economical and has a high readability score (79), but that doesn't mean my stories are simple and straightforward. In my opinion it's more difficult to describe complex issues in simple words than to turn simple issues complicated by using 'difficult' words.

I agree with both of you gentlemen. My books are straightforward in the way they're written--it's my personality, not going to change unless I have a head injury--but the stories handle deep and multi-faceted issues. I know my style doesn't suit everyone, but neither does anything else.

R.A. wrote: "I know my style doesn't suit everyone, but neither does anything else."

I can fully empathize, R.A. Personally, I think "Kergulen" sounds like a fascinating read and I've added it to my (very long) TBR list... ;o)

@R.A. If you are referring to 'that' discussion group. Don't sweat it. Some of the reasons to reject books baffle me. If it's not what they expect... out it goes. Well you don't write for them. You write for the people who will read and love your book for what it is and not for what they want it to be. Cheer up. :)
When I think that one of the reason to reject Kergulen was because the eyes of the girl on the cover looked 'normal'. Come on! Don't make me laugh, I'll start coughing again... geez...

I am pleased to see so many useful information over here. I feel relieved to know that complexity of words is not making a book.
My worries were mainly coming because most of the books I had read contained many complicated words. And as Janelovering and Lex mentioned, I was always with the dictionary in my hand.
Also, Martyn V. when I say simple words I definitely don't mean vague words. I always describe every emotion and everything that moves in the story. If I use 'handsome' I quickly add description.
R.A. I guess, no matter how good author one is, it will never be good enough. I think is extremely important to be authentic on everything we do. Everything else comes and goes.
Beside I am not very comfortable using words that I hardly know or I just searched out from thesaurus ;D


I appreciate your time and a big thank you for all of you.

G.G. wrote: "@R.A. If you are referring to 'that' discussion group. Don't sweat it. Some of the reasons to reject books baffle me. If it's not what they expect... out it goes. Well you don't write for them. You..."

I actually left that group a long time ago, so I don't know what happened there. I look for people with more skill and success than I have to give me direction. I realized pretty quick that in that group a lot of the people making the dictations were not in that category, and rather than spend my life irritated I just left. I did see the comment about the eyes, though. I thought it was strangely humorous to believe an author should explain everything in a 200,000 word book in the first three paragraphs.
G.C., There is no such thing as good enough because every reader comes to a book with a particular bias and expectation. I absolutely believe books should be well edited, free of plot holes, and so on before they're published, but even if you do that some people will love your book and others will hate it. I don't know why a person would pick up a fantasy novel and complain that it isn't realistic enough, for example, but they do. Or say a science fiction book is ridiculous because it has magic in it. Really? As long as a story follows its own rules, it's good to go. No one else can write rules for you to follow. Unless you get a traditional publishing deal :).

G. C. wrote: "I am pleased to see so many useful information over here. I feel relieved to know that complexity of words is not making a book [...] Also, Martyn V. when I say simple words I definitely don't mean vague words. I always describe every emotion and everything that moves in the story. If I use 'handsome' I quickly add description."

Since I haven't read your work, rest assured that my mention of 'vague' words was not addressed at you personally.

However 'simple words' is often translated as 'lazy' writing. I read a lot of children's books the last few years (my oldest is 7), so I come across a lot of books for beginning readers, but I'm often surprised by the sophistication of certain (Dutch) books for young readers.

I think that powerful writing comes from using the right words at exactly the right place. Overly verbose prose can often distract from the message you're trying to convey, so it's important to choose the appropriate wording instead of trying to dazzle the reader with words that will have them keep the dictionary at hand.

What I often recommend is to search and replace the word 'very' in their prose, since it's mostly used to quantify weak words, i.e. 'very angry' is not as powerful as 'enraged' and 'very happy' is not as powerful as 'ecstatic'.

Martyn V. wrote: "G. C. wrote: "I am pleased to see so many useful information over here. I feel relieved to know that complexity of words is not making a book [...] Also, Martyn V. when I say simple words I definit..."

'Very' is a great example. For me it's 'really'. I have to search them during the editing process and replace them all with appropriate words. There are a few other words that I tend to over use, along with ;, and I have to go through and fix them later. Like one character who was always 'relieved'. It was because of his high stress personality, but I went through and rephrased. Things like that make a very big difference in the quality of a book ;p.

Martyn V. wrote: "G. C. wrote: "I am pleased to see so many useful information over here. I feel relieved to know that complexity of words is not making a book [...] Also, Martyn V. when I say simple words I definit..."

That is a good point. I have issues all the time with using often a specific word, yet I try to replace them. My 'obsession' is mostly over 'saw', 'said', 'but'.
Obviously, I learn every day from my own mistakes and always look after some good advices :)
My work is not ready yet and I don't think it's going to happen in the close future. I want to make sure that even if I fail it won't happen because I rushed to write it and publish it.

I have a whole list of 'crutch words' that should be avoided. :)

@ G.C.

For those with English as a second language, it is also important to watch for verb and adjective placement in a sentence.

As a youth, I spoke Spanish as a second language and now, German. These two are much alike in sentence structure while English is often the exact opposite.

Many years ago, I met a young lady in Germany. One evening she told me, "Ich hab dich sehr lieb." I'd learned a few words by that time and literally translated, "I have you very like." It took me a few seconds to grasp what she'd said.

I admire folks that can transfer their foreign language into written English as I often have a hard time putting English to paper correctly... lol.

Unless a character is a word snob, you should be fine. Just be aware of repeating the same words. Like, instead of walk, can your character skip, glide, saunter...?

In my opinion, it's not usually the word choice that causes problems. It's the repetition of words and sentence structure--no matter their complexity. You certainly don't want your readers to say, "Hey, didn't I just read that sentence?" or "Jeez, dude, could you please use a different adjective!" Too much repetition equals boredom and distraction. I suggest changing it up enough to avoid overuse of words, phrases, and sentence patterns.

I say all this with the acknowledgement that this is an area with which I struggle as well.

In one of my college courses the instructor was a real stickler for wanting us to use simple words. His beef was, why be complicated when you can be simple? Whenever a student would use phrases like "at the present time", or "at this point in time", his comment would be, "do you mean 'now'? Then SAY 'now'!" In which case he was pointing out that saying "at this point in time" does NOT make you sound smarter, it just makes you sound like a doofus (I don't think you'll find that one in the dictionary) who doesn't know how to get to the point.

However, I must admit that I once used "eschew obfuscation" rather than the much simpler "avoid confusion", but in that case I did it on purpose in order to convince my audience that they DID need to look up words they don't know.

Bottom line? K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid!) (I'm not calling YOU stupid, that's just an old saying you throw out to encourage people to not get too complicated.) Or, "less is more", which is another old saying. So I'll take my own advice and stop now!

In your browser, click "images" then search for "writers chart."

Grumpy, I write technical manuals and it drives me crazy when people write Utilize instead of USE. I would have liked your teacher. :)