Finding Your Writing Voice - Diction

Levels of diction and their roles

In this article, we continue our expedition into finding our writing voice with the concept of level of diction. If you haven’t read the first installment in this series, I’d suggest you do so before continuing. The information and exercises will compound and build upon what came before them.

Diction, simply put, is the register or level of word choice you use to convey your story. Here’s one quick example to illustrate this point. Suppose we have a table setting at a restaurant. Fine china. Crystal. Polished silverware. The works. We could choose to describe this as “fancy.” If you wanted to use a word on a higher level of diction, you might describe the same scene as “elegant” or “opulent.” We may also chose to move our description in the direction of a local vernacular and call it “high-falutin’.” Each version carries the same meaning, but the words we chose gave that description a different weight, a different mood or tone.

This is the power of the level of diction. It’s a writing tool we can wield to shape and mold our stories into an experience, rather than a mere collection of words on a page. This is a big part of what separates Cormac McCarthy from Stephen King, or Joyce Carol Oates from Colleen Hoover. That’s not to say that one’s better than the other. It’s more to point out that each of these authors finds their readers and their career successes through authentic voices only they can produce. Their choice in the level of diction used plays an integral role in their writing voice.

For further exploration of diction, I offer up the following exercise.

The scene: You’ve just witnessed a car accident at an intersection. A sedan ran the light and got plowed by an SUV.

Exercise 1: Retell the events of the accident as though you’re talking to a friend, family member, or co-worker.

Exercise 2: Retell the same events, but this time tell it to a seven-year-old child who’s asked you what happened.

Exercise 3: Retell the same accident, but this time to the police officer who arrived on the scene to get your account of the events.

Now, go back and review what you’ve written. See any differences? What changed? Why? These are a few examples of your own levels of diction. There are many more for you to explore, and when found, you can employ them in various ways throughout your writing. Who is the narrator of your current work in progress? Have you defined their level of diction and maintained it throughout the story? In a similar manner, you can use level of diction to help you define each of your characters’ voices in a given story. We’ll delve more into that specific topic in another installment. For now, we’ll stay focused on crafting our writing and narrative voice first.

Until next time,

Happy writing!