Tired of using the same verbs in your action paragraphs? Check out Word Menu. It has 76,423 words broken down into 984 categories. This is not your father’s thesaurus. In fact, it’s not a thesaurus. Words are not grouped by meaning but by subject; like verbs.
Using Word Menu you could easily and quickly look up “Action and Sense Words” which breaks down into “Verbs of Motion,” “Verbs of Sight,” “Verbs of Speech,” “Sounds and Noises,” and “Smells and Tastes.” Each of these break down in sub-categories. For example, “Verbs of Motions” is divided into “Gaits,” “Mood and Intent,” and “Directions.” And each sub-category has an impressive, and exceedingly useful, list of words.
Click on “Gaits” and a window opens with a list of words that have to do with “gait” as a motion verb. The list begins with "amble, barrel, bounce, bustle.” This list has over a hundred words, and each word has a brief definition available. The list appears in a window at the top of the screen. The words are in columns that you can scroll through. Below this window is another window, where the words are listed vertically with a brief definition to the right of each word. If you click on a word in the upper window columns, the lower window will jump to that word.
Especially when I’m writing in screenplay format, I sometimes go nuts trying to find a variety of verbs to use. Too often, I find myself comfortably using the same handful of verbs. Years ago I bought Word Menu in its original book form, and it always helped prime the pump and bring a richness to my screenwriting prose. And I also love simply running through the lists from time to time. And when I’ve been stuck, it's been a quick, easy reference.
Another brilliant use of this program is for basic research. Say you’re working on a story and you have a military character but you are not familiar with military ranks. You can search for “military” and you will get all the categories and words in the database that use that word in any form. I did this search, and at the very top of the search is “Military Ranks.” I clicked on that and got “Army, Air Force, and Marines” as a single category. Below this, the program provides this information: “general of the army (5-star), marshal (Europe).” Below that category is “Navy and Coast Guard,” and if you go into that category, it lists the names of the ranks from the lowest enlisted person to the highest ranking officer. Now that’s useful and quick.
Here’s another research related search. I’m currently working on a story that deals with World War II Air Force Service Pilots. I’m not a pilot and could use some terms to sprinkle in my script. So I just searched “pilot” and found interesting terms such as “break horsepower, barrel roll, and burble.” I wonder what “burble” means as a flying term. Let’s click on it, and it says “burble - irregular flow of air around aircraft.” That could be useful. Anyway, back to the list there’s “ditch, dive, drag, drift” and so on. If I was looking for a flying term, this is excellent ready reference.
Occasionally, I’ll just sit down with the book and review the verbs categories and refresh my memory. Now I can do that on my computer. Here’s another useful example for screenwriters. I just jumped to “Speech Sounds” and my eye fell on “yammer.” Now there's a word that I haven’t heard in years, but it’s interesting enough that I could see myself using it in either dialogue or in the action/description paragraphs. I look back and quickly find “quibble, gab, bleat, and sputter” and the list goes on. If you want to know how a sound is spelled or to find the specific sound you want to write, this is the prefect resource.
I hope that the excitement that I have for this program comes through. I absolutely love it. The program is exceedingly easy to navigate and there is one more very cool tool. It has a "Vocabulary Pad" where you can accumulate words to create your own quick reference. Now that ain’t your father's reference!
To check this program out, go to Write Brothers, Inc. and click on Word Menu.
This is a tremendous writing tool. Download a trial version. |
