By The Pricking Of My Thumbs...

Wickedly Wicked

Wicked!  I just love that word. It conjures up images of witches and wizards for me and I always think of the late Ray Bradbury‘s brilliant novel “Something wicked this way comes”. He took his inspiration from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, of course.

Nowadays it is used by young people as a replacement for the word ‘brilliant’ or something similar. It is also associated with the word ‘cool’ – as in something or someone being ‘hip’ or current. Whoever said language was not a living breathing changeable entity!

Anyway, I digress. What I mean to talk about is the original proper use of the word. When I looked it up in my dictionary it said it meant evil or sinful. But then there was a whole host of harsh words from ‘abominable’ to ‘abased’ to ‘shameful’ and ‘vicious’. In fact over fifty similar words! Many of which I have used time and again in my own supernatural thriller writing.

But nothing says something evil quite as succinctly as ‘wicked’. It goes best with villainous characters and horrific deeds.

“To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.” Voltaire said.  A wonderful quote, indeed... I think one could weave an entire story around some of the quotes about wickedness.

A good word like this can be as helpful in horror/thriller writing as love is in romance writing. But it can equally be much overused and abused.

Do you have favourite words that you feel inclined to use more often than not?

 

Pac-men, jigsaws and numbers for titles

Titles are the bane of my life! They are as elusive as the slippery fish you can see in the water but just can't get a hold of. I get sidetracked from my actual writing by pausing to think of a better title for my WIP. It matters not that I already have a reasonably good one, my brain will refuse to accept there is nothing better. It roams ceaselessly, turning over words, rhymes, sayings and phrases until utter confusion rampages across my thinking processes. It picks out words from my work like jigsaw pieces and tries to fit them together into what may well be the absolute best title in the whole world - it thinks!
Why, oh why do I get stuck like this? I have been known to wake in the night with random titles jiggling together like pac-men (oh dear, that dates me!) in some old computer game. When I finally do get the words together I then start juggling them around to try to get the best impact!
Generally speaking, in the final draft I use the words I first thought of anyway, so what was all the fuss about? I just don't know... And there again, publishers can suggest their own and not go with yours... Maybe, I should just use numbers...
What do you think?
http://www.patricianewcombe.webnode.com/

Can you rhyme orange?

I was looking through some old stuff from my university course the other day and recalled a great discussion about how certain words just did not have much rhyming potential. The word in question was 'orange'. I found the short poem I wrote to prove I could rhyme it - sort of...

"Fresh pasta and sauces, the taste buds they tingle

As the wonderful smells delightfully mingle.

With cutlery clinking, the diners tuck in

and the champagne bubbles, they sparkle and spin.

Some touch the huge platter of duck a l' orange

sat next to the shivering strawberry blancmange.

And all agree the feast was delicious even if not so completely nutritious. "

It may not be the best bit of poetry in the world but I do remember having fun devising it as I also tried to incorporate all the senses. It made me realise that writing can sometimes be just about fun. It doesn't always have to be a gallop to the finishing post of publication. We should all make time to linger along the way and smell the flowers.
What do you think? Do you sometimes write purely for fun? Can you find a better rhyme for 'orange'?