The Ultimate Fiction Thesaurus (a creative writing study in the tradition of the elements of style)

There are a thousand ways to say something and at least a few hundred to express it well. This is not simply another thesaurus but a writing lesson which aims to shave a year off of your creative development. This is a bold objective but as you go over these devices, in this brief but powerful tutorial, it will train you to think like a novelist. Let's see how this works:

First we start with a character description: Bill has grey hair.

This is a fine description, and certainly direct, but let's flex our muscles a little more:

Bill's hair is salted with grey.
Bill's hair is frosted with age.
Bill's hair is threaded with silver.

Now try these concept words on your own: peppered, streaked, flecked, weeded

You can immediately see the limitations of a traditional thesaurus; they are helpful at supplying literal equivalents, such as charcoal for grey, but frequently miss the finer nuances of language.

Beyond the inspirational support most books offer, I can assure you that two things, and only two, are guaranteed to improve your writing. These are reading and the act of writing itself. This is a small but unique 'literary thesaurus' that bridges the gap of reading by taking common descriptive devices and words and places them into usable categories that will serve as a ready toolbox for your own writing.

This lesson is ideal for beginning and intermediate fiction writers and is approximately thirteen pages in length.