Finding the right word at the right time

On specificity and surprise, with wisdom from comedian James Acaster.

Listen to me reading this newsletter aloud here.

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So often when we talk about writing as adults, we’re talking about the big picture: the hours or months of trying to shape something, and the structure or plot or argument, and the characterisation. We focus – necessarily – on big, lumpy elements like that. We don’t talk much about the raw material itself: each dainty little word that goes to tell a story. I think before my creative writing MA, I hadn’t had discussions about vocabulary choice since childhood, and that’s what I’d like to look at today.

Maybe this reflects my own interests, but I’m more aware of the impact of meticulous language in humour than elsewhere. Some words are just funnier than others – in fact, even some numbers are funnier than others. Maybe it’s funnier, for example, to say that you filmed thirteen different attempts at a birthday video for your friend, than it is to say that you filmed it five times (unremarkable) or a thousand (implausible).

So much of humour hinges on surprise. We want to be surprised, but we also want to feel, on some level, that it makes sense; we could have put it together ourselves if we’d really thought about it. You can see that in babies: they find Peekaboo the most entertaining game in the world, even if you’ve been Peekaboo-ing at them for the last five minutes and they definitely know what’s coming. It’s a not-surprise surprise, and it’s delightful.

The same is true with language. If you can describe something in a way that’s unexpected but also meaningful, you can get a big laugh. The stand-up comedian James Acaster talked about this on the In Writing podcast. Here’s an edited version of what he said.

Structure I was always ok at, but choosing the right words was something that I hadn’t really paid any attention to until seeing someone like Mike Wozniak, and being like, ‘Oh, if he changed that word to something else, this routine wouldn’t work.’ I realised that that is a big part of the comedy tool belt that you need – because half the time, the funny idea you’ve got in your head is funny, but you’re not communicating it to the audience. You’re using bog-standard language, or language that’s a bit too vague, and you’re hoping that they see what’s funny about it the same way that you do – whereas if you choose the exact right word that can’t be misconstrued, they can’t help but visualise the same thing that you’re visualising.

I had a routine in my third show about how people steal the spoons from Wahaca because they’re really nice, but Wahaca have a policy that you can bring the stolen spoons back in January and they’ll give you free tacos. I think the line I had in it was, ‘It’s a double-win for Wahaca, because they get their spoons back, and they get to watch the thief eat tacos, which I imagine have been interfered with beyond belief’. And ‘interfered with’ was funnier than saying ‘spat in’ or ‘jizzed in’, and ‘beyond belief’ was just a funny phrase at the end.

That routine wouldn’t have been funny [if I’d used other words], because I think before you get to the punchline, the audience can guess what the punchline is. You know, maybe not 100%, but they’re halfway there. I think the audience are already thinking, ‘I wouldn’t want to eat those tacos…’ and you still need to surprise them with the punchline. Even if they’re ahead of you, you can articulate it better than they’ve articulated it in their head, and it surprises them, and the laugh comes from that connection.

(By the way, I would highly recommend James’s 2018 book Classic Scrapes, which made me cry with laughter. I see that he also recently brought out the book James Acaster’s Guide to Quitting Social Media, which I guess I didn’t know about until now because he doesn’t use social media.)

This accuracy isn’t just important in humour, of course. All writing is about communication, whether that’s of ideas, information or emotion, and to be effective, you really want to create the same image in the reader’s head that you have in your own. That’s why, on my MA, the word ‘specificity’ came up a lot. You can say a fridge is dirty, or you can say, ‘it has the sweet-sour smell of last month’s milk and felted, collapsing vegetables’ – or something. If you want someone to see it, you have to write it as clearly and specifically as you can.

This leads me on to a related problem that affects journalists: it’s clunky to use the same word repeatedly in the space of a few paragraphs. This is why journalists sometimes use unnatural language, reporting a story about a boat and then starting the next paragraph with ‘The vessel docked in Liverpool…’, as though anyone ever refers to a boat as a vessel.

The Twitter account @secondmentions keeps brilliant track of these. Some recent examples that they’ve shared include the phrase ‘winter stuff’, meaning snow; ‘low-slung foxy-faced canines’, meaning corgis; ‘the stinky bulb’, meaning garlic; and ‘the felt favourites’ – who are, of course, The Muppets.

I know I do this too in my journalism. It can be annoying, but the goal is to make it less annoying than using the word ‘snow’ fourteen times in a 600-word article.

When Meg Mason came on the podcast, she said it was liberating for her when she decided to stop using a thesaurus and be content with the words that sprung to mind. I see what she means. Often simpler is better (for instance, most writers agree that it’s better to repeat ‘says’, a word that has become basically invisible, than to vary it ostentatiously by having people ‘ponder’ and ‘declare’ and ‘insist’). But I do find a thesaurus – or let’s be honest, googling ‘_____ synonym’ – a useful memory-aid when the word that sprung to mind isn’t quite it.

It’s worth getting as close to perfect as possible – by which I mean, ideal, faultless, optimal and exact.

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Thank you for bearing with me last week while I took a break. I was in France, floundering about in French and failing to find the optimal word for anything more nuanced than a potato.

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By the way, 82% of people who responded to my poll in the last newsletter said they’d like more frequent In Writing Creative Hours, which is when we get together on Google Meet to chat and then write in companionable silence. So from now on I’m going to do it roughly twice a month. I’m keeping the schedule a little flexible to allow for weekends when I can’t find the requisite peace and quiet or wifi connection – but I will give you plenty of notice when one is coming up.

With that in mind, the next Creative Hour will be on Sunday 30 October at 10am. These events are for paying subscribers only, but the good news is that upgrading is not very expensive.

I’ll be back with another newsletter next Thursday. Good luck with your writing until then!