Yes, the(almighty)saurus.

You see, many amateur writers would tend to use this tool as their key for any type of sentence formation to sound much more elaborate and intelligent than their minds would be able to produce by themselves. However, there is a slight problem. Like any other tool, without knowing how to actually use it properly, the result comes out crappy. I guess you could say it’s like a conventional oven. If you were to bake cookies, I’m sure they won’t turn out just right if you freakin’ have them baking in the oven for 1 hour at 700 degrees Celsius. A bit exaggerated, but you get the point. Likewise, using a thesaurus incorrectly will give you crap results.

Note: I live in the US, so I don’t have any knowledge as to how high the temperatures of ovens outside of my country are capable of. Hell, I don’t even know my own.

You know, some have commented that I’m extremely obsessed with correcting grammar, but you see, this is where that is applied. You still have to know your grammatically correct sentence structure as well as verb tenses and such to be able to use a thesaurus correctly, as well as having a feel for context, and when and when not to use certain words.

I’m not telling you to completely forget about the thesaurus and burn it into a million ashes, but before we progress into more sophisticated writing, we must first make use of the words we already know.

For example, let’s take a simple sentence:

He finished his food.

Simple enough, right? Well, the sentence does sound a bit generic, at least that’s what would go through someone’s mind initially (if they’re thinking of improving their writing that is). So (the utter mistake) we then turn to our trusty little dinosaur (the thesaurus, not freakin’ Kim Jonghyun) to find a fancy little synonym for the word ‘finish.’ Ah! Looky here! ‘to conclude’ means the same as ‘to finish’ so we shall replace that, correct verb tense of course. So now the sentence has turned out like this.

He concluded his food.

Well, doesn’t that just sound dandy. I wish I could conclude my food…

The sentence sounds damn terrible, because the context is all wrong. One finishes their food, meaning they finish eating, or they finish off their food, saying concluded does not work, because the word is used in a totally different context. Now, what would be worse is if someone didn’t even bother with verb tenses and just put the word in there.

He finish his food.
He conclude his food.

This is the point I’m making, don’t use a thesaurus if you don’t even know how words are supposed to be used, or when they’re supposed to be used. “He finished his food” may sound generic, but it’s grammatically correct, and doesn’t confuse the reader in any way. I’m sure you’ve heard many say “sometimes more is less” and though I, personally, would love to read things described in more detail, making things just convoluted in nature because you want to sound smart is not how to do it.

There has to be a purpose for the level of detail in which something is described. If the subject is described vividly, the subject will have a purpose in the story. If not, then I’m sure no one would care and you would just be wasting your time typing out a huge description for it.

Not much this time, but short, and straight to the point.