Storyworthy Summary (C21): Words to Say, Words to Avoid

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The words you choose make a difference.

It doesn’t matter whether you are telling a story to your brother or a board member, you must choose your words carefully because they impact how your audience views you.

Here are some guidelines.

In general, you should avoid swearing. It’s a lazy and cheap laugh. There are usually much better words you could use instead.

There are, however, a few cases where swearing is warranted:

• Repeated dialogue. If someone in your story says something that includes a swear word, repeat it exactly how it was said.
• When it truly is the best word possible. Sometimes, ‘asshole’ truly is the most accurate descriptive word for someone.
• Extreme emotion
• Humor, but don’t rely on or overdo it.

Vulgarity refers to the things you might think twice about saying in front of your grandmother or on a first date, such as things of a sexual nature, bodily fluids, etc. They are the things that might make your audience uncomfortable.

If there are vulgar themes in your story that must be told, you are better off alluding to them as opposed to saying them outright.

For example, instead of going into the disgusting details of the time you shat your pants, you could simply say that you had an ‘accident’. The audience will understand what you mean when taken into context with the events leading up to it, e.g., soon after eating your tummy starts to rumble.

Changing the names of the characters in your story is a reasonable thing to do.

Choose a similar one to make it easier to remember, e.g., Emma to Jemma.

The problem with using celebrity names or other pop culture references is that your audience might not understand them.

Additionally, mentioning or comparing someone to a celebrity (for example, my ex-girlfriend is kind of like a white Beyoncé) puts the celebrity into the mind of the audience. Instead of introducing an unwanted character, describe the actual character.

Never, ever, imitate the accent of someone from another country or culture.

The only exception is if you are imitating your grandparents or parents, or you are imitating the accent from where you grew up as long as you share the race of the people you are imitating.

If you are ever questioning whether or not to do an accent, don’t.

Read the next chapter here.

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