Vocabulary Writing Prompts

There's a thing I started doing a couple of years ago, where I'd find new vocabulary words that I thought were cool and would use them to write a sentence or snippet. I enjoyed this exercise so much that I ended up using it to help generate new interesting scenes, lines, and snippets that would fit into my bigger WIPs, especially my fantasy stories (The Qarran Tales). 

There was something very satisfying about learning new, powerful words and using that vocabulary in my own writing. But it was also a very fun writing challenge for me, and it became a game that I would play whenever I had a few minutes to myself.

One word game in particular, Freerice, is my go-to for these vocabulary writing prompts (with the added benefit of donating food). When I'd get to a word that I didn't know and liked, I'd take a break from playing the game to write a line or two using that word, and then get back to playing. 

But you can also use the Merriam-Webster Dictionary's Word of the Day or Dictionary.com's Word of the Day to find cool words. There are also a plethora of random word generators that you can find online with a quick search, and those can be quite helpful, too!

For example, for the word "somniferous", I wrote the following couple of lines:

The somniferous herb soon had the entire room fast asleep, their tea cups not even half finished. Perhaps her mixture had been too strong.

To help guide me, I try to think of how the vocabulary word could fit into any one of my stories. For example, the line above would fit quite nicely into a fantasy story that I've been plotting wherein a young herbalist exacts her revenge on the people who killed her parents. That doesn't mean I'll use it, but it helps me think a little more about what I could write about, and what kinds of scenes, worldbuilding, or character-building I can include.

If you'd like a list to get you started, here are some words that might be of interest to you. (What makes the game fun is to choose the words that you like. You don't have to force yourself to use words you don't really want to use.)

1. warmonger - a person who stirs up war
2. heterodoxy - deviation from accepted or orthodox standards or beliefs
3. caustic - biting, sarcastic
4. pariah - an outcast; a rejected and despised person
5. accretion - the growing of separate things into one
6. rarefy - to purify or refine
7. pundit - pedant authority on a subject
8. inveterate - deep-rooted; long-established
9. lugubrious - mournful; excessively sad
10. argot - jargon; slang
11. engender - cause; produce; give rise to
12. ignoble - dishonorable; common; undignified
13. cognizant - fully aware of
14. emaciate - make thin/weak
15. tractable - easily controlled or guided
16. rancorous - feeling bitterness or spitefulness
17. lionize - to treat as a famous person

I hope you get some good use out of these vocabulary writing prompts! This has been an activity that I constantly find myself going back to, especially when I have no clue what to write next. 

Happy writing!

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Check out my psychological thriller Apartment.

Looking for a writing prompt workbook? Check out 101 Writing Prompts.