One of the first things a good writer learns is not to repeat words. It bores the reader. Go figure. I run into trouble with this because sometimes in our English language, there aren’t synonyms.

Take the word snow. How many different ways can you say snow? Snow. White stuff. Flakes. Umm, I’m out already. You end up with, “Joe went out to shovel the snow. The white stuff was higher than the top of his boots. Flakes continued to fall from the sky. When would this snow end? He could shovel the white stuff now, but there would be many, many more flakes on the ground come morning.”

See how many synonyms you can come up with for smile and laugh. Not as many as you thought, huh? And when my characters aren’t crying, weeping, or sobbing, they are smiling and laughing. And I want to pull my hair out.

Because the Eskimos and Inuits live in such a snowy climate, they have come up with many descriptive words for snow, including new snow, falling snow, ice-crusted snow, snow mixed with rain particles, etc. Love it. I think English speakers need a few of these terms. Snain: snow mixed with rain; ne-now: new snow. What do you think??

Brownies, cookies, cake, etc. are hard, too. And sometimes when you go for a synonym, it ends up awkward. “Janice held the brownies close to her, not wanting to drop them. She set the pan on the table, hoping everyone would enjoy the sweet treat. The chocolatey bars were her favorite.” See? We don’t think like that. I read something like this in a book once. Being an author myself, I noticed it right away and sympathized with the author. Poor girl could bring herself to write brownies one more time.

In the end, it might be better just to use the word brownies. It may be repetitious, but it’s not as awkward a chocolatey bars. Or, the paragraph might have to be rewritten all together. “Joe went out to shovel his driveway. The snow was higher than the top of his boots and flakes continued to fall. When would this storm end? He could break his back now, but he would have to repeat the job in the morning. He hated winter.”

How about a synonym for synonym?

What words do you have a difficult time finding synonyms for?