This is probably one of the least helpful writing tip columns I’ve written. It’s so darned obvious.

Word choice.

We’re writers, we choose the words. Right?

Yes and no.

Yes, technically, we’re the ones typing (or if you’re old-school, writing with an ink-and-quill-pen) the words on a screen (or paper, or parchment. Or stone tablet, if you’re really old school.)

But, no, we’re not the only ones choosing words. The characters are, too. The narrator’s word choices shows her/his perspective. It can show the character’s past and its influence on her present circumstances. It can express a character’s emotions about some discovery.

The reader is seeing the plot unfold through a particular viewpoint (usually a character’s) and their word choices color how the reader responds to the story. So our word choices as writers must be influenced by this. It can’t simply be any word; it has to be the one that best reflects our point of view character.

Choose words that show how the character’s past influences her present

(from Graveyard Bay by Thomas Kies)

Geneva is a reporter whose newspaper has just been acquired by a new publishing company. She is demoted from an editorial position back to the crime beat, and her pay has lowered as well. The new managing editor, Lorraine, calls her into her office. After complimenting Geneva’s career achievements, she brings up the low point: Geneva’s drinking. Then she issues an ultimatum: no drinking on the job. Adding insult to injury, she mentions a previous drunken episode that ended in Geneva’s arrest for punching a cop. Drink on the job? Bye-bye job.

Geneva nods, feels tears in her eyes, and hopes “that this bitch couldn’t see them” (chapter 6).

This bitch. That one word conveys so much of her feelings.

To me, what Lorraine is requesting (though in an unkind manner) isn’t entirely unreasonable. Given Geneva’s history, Lorraine is right to worry. She needs her staff on their A game and definitely doesn’t need any issues with the police.

But Geneva’s not seeing it this way. She’s seeing yet another person dredging up her past as a threat. She’s gotten that from everyone: her ex-boss, her ex-boyfriend. Even her teen daughter harps on her about the excessive drinking. Because there’s a threat to her job, it’s worse. Even worse? The threat’s coming from the woman who got Geneva’s old job and her old salary. In case that wasn’t enough, the woman is younger; Geneva’s feeling a bit insecure about being forty, especially as her ex-boyfriend is dating a much younger woman.

Given all that, it’s no wonder she thinks of this woman as the b-word.

Her entire past colors how she sees other people’s actions and words.

Even if Lorraine had meant all this kindly–and later it’s clear that she doesn’t–then Geneva still would’ve felt hostile and defensive because of her past.

Notice, though, that Kies does not mention the age issue, the salary decrease, the ex-boyfriend’s breakup over the drinking, or her emotions about any of this. We’ve already learned that in the first five chapters. By chapter six, it can be shown by word choice alone.

Kies is terrific with this, by the way.

Filter facts through the character’s emotions.

(from No Place of Refuge by Ausma Zehanat Khan)

There are a lot of facts about the Syrian refugee crisis and war in this novel. There’s one section in particular when Esa, the lead investigator, finds evidence of evildoing. (I’m trying not to give too much away or quote from the text. Just know that it’s a lot of evidence, it’s a lot of facts, and it’s overwhelming.)

If Khan had simply presented the facts, say, through a monologue or straight narrative, it would read like non-fiction. I’ve read novels where the authors do that, and it interrupts the story. I thought, just get on with it, and was irritated at the author’s agenda intruding into the story.

That’s not what Khan does here. (She does at other points in the novel, unfortunately.) She’s making an argument: you need to care about the refugees and no, it’s not as simple as “wait to enter a country legally.” Yet it never reads like an argument.

It’s filtered through Esa’s mind.

He’s a devout Muslim and an experienced investigator. Here, as he reads, we’re reading these facts through his eyes and in his words.

More importantly, we’re experiencing his emotional response. He’s in anguish. How could the God he worships allow these things to happen? How can people inflict this much misery on their fellow humans? Because Esa is having such a strong emotional response, the reader is sucked into his emotions and feeling what he’s feeling.

We’re not reading dry facts anymore, on the outside looking in. We’re living inside the story.