Grammar girl here, November is National Novel Writing Month, better known as NANO-RIMO.

So in honor of all the people who are writing a novel this month, today's podcast is by

the International Best Selling Author and Writing Teacher, David Farland, about why word choices

matter and how you can choose the right words to incite your reader's imagination.

Every author who's ever stared at a blank page knows the primary difficulty in telling

a story, which is that whatever we write immediately begins to constrict us to constrain

us into telling a certain type of story.

In short, if I begin by describing a space battle between two partnerships, I've suddenly

narrowed my tail to a science fiction piece.

I can't very well turn it into a Victorian romance or a fantasy tale set in a completely

imagined world.

The opening might even restrict our tone.

Starting off with an adventure beat doesn't allow me very easily to slip into a romantic

scene, doing so would require a little setup.

Nor does the adventure scene naturally allow me to leap into a flashback where our protagonist

felt a terrible loss when his best friend moved away.

Once again, we need more setup.

So the scenes that we begin with define and narrow the kind of story that we can tell,

and at a much smaller level, our word choice does the same.

Researchers need to be precise in their use of language in order to avoid confusing

a reader.

I like the quotation from Mark Twain, who's credited with saying that the difference

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