Chanyeol's so happy.

Chanyeol's so nice.

Chanyeol's so angry. 

Chanyeol's so dead—

Dead words, man.

What are dead words, you ask? 

Well according to my best buddy Google, they are: Words in the English language that are overused, and because of that they don't really have an impact in writing. 

 You can find a list of them online, or you can just generally guess. It's kind of obvious which words are dead words. 

Instead of using dead words, pull out a thesaurus! Synonyms for happy: content, cheerful, merry, joyful, ecstatic, whatever.

Interesting words really give your writing some colour, but at the same time you don't want to be that person.

"Chanyeol was beatific—with Baekhyun situated there on his calcanea, posterior facing the crepuscular sky, he was convinced that he performed the right decision in wedding this homo sapiens. Baekhyun looked divine, and Chanyeol thanked heavens that his chauvinistic father hadn't stopped him." 

Yeah idk half the words I used either.

Don't be that person.

You have to find a good balance—toss in some fancy words only sometimes, unless your character is a fancy shmancy butler

But.

Butt.

At that same time, don't neglect dead words entirely. There are many ways you can use dead words, and I like to talk about the words "say/says/said/other forms". People and writing blogs are always saying: Don't use said!!! Omg bad! It is bad boring word!

I actually disagree. The only thing I have to say about "said" is that you should use it as much as you use the synonyms for it. Deleting it entirely from your vocabulary is unnecessary, to me at least. Feel free to disagree. 

There are also some creative ways you can make dead words really impactful. For example, there's a character who's always feeling complicated emotions. 

They know themselves very well and can pinpoint exactly what they're feeling. Yet, for some reason, when they're with this person they simply feel... happy. There's no other word to describe it—it's not complicated to them. It's easy being with this person.

Something like that.

I also just generally avoid using words that no one would know. Like crepuscular. The fuck even is that word??? Like it is good to be fancy and descriptive sometimes but you want your audience to still understand your writing. 

That is all I have to say!

Moral of the story: think before you use dead words, "said" ain't your enemy, and spice up your writing with some synonyms (occasionally)

ur -10 writer is oot.