Using unusual words in your writing--yes or no?

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                Recently, I read a book where—at the end—the narrator was nine years old. Yet she used the phrase, “Am I paranoid?” I flagged it. For I didn’t learn that word till I had been married for some few years.

 

                Now, I have a narrator—in her 30s, a rural high school graduate cum-newspaper woman during World War II—who uses the words “voila” and “epithets.” Which led me to wonder if she would know those words in her thirties, given her background. Methinks not.

 

                But they are such good words. I had a high school friend named “Viola.” Of course, the viola (small case) is a well-known, if not particularly stand-outish, stringed instrument. Some folks still get that word confused with “voila.” Some other folks pronounce it “wah-lah.” Even up into his college years, one fellow confessed.

 

                I’ve asked around—on Facebook, during a lull in choir practice, in emails—to see when and where folks learned “voila!”

 

                “During French class in high school,” one answered.
 

 Now, I have no mention in A Journey of Choice” of my protagonist taking French at her school. Could I somehow—in the sequel—insert that bit of information? Perhaps the superintendent or the English teacher gave her a one-on-one class, knowing that she was destined for something beyond what the small community could offer her. Perhaps.

 

Another responder said he saw it in his comic books, but didn’t know how to pronounce it until later.

 

A third person answered that she heard it in Saturday morning cartoons! She even did an impression for us.

 

I don’t remember when or where I learned the word, “voila!” but I DO remember learning the word “genre.”

 

In graduate school residency at the University of Arkansas the summer of 1977 (at age 41), I took History of Choral Music (or something like that—gee, now 35 years later, what does it matter?)  under Dr. Groh.

 

If he used the word “genre” once, he used it a hundred times during the course. We soon began smirking and rolling our eyes each time he said it.
 

 Now that I call myself a writer, I hear, see and use the word often. Writing has as many (or more) genres as music.

 

Another word in my sequel, whose working title is Her Face in the Glass, which comes from the mouth of my protag is “epithet,” as in, “We razzed him with epithets,." /“Brain.” / “Smart-aleck,” etc.

 

To this day, I don’t think I EVER used this word in conversation. Which makes me wonder if Liddy would know the word, much less tell us (as the narrator).

 

An editorial in the Saline [AR] Courier last Sunday by Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post was headlined, “New SAT don’t care ‘bout no fancy words.”

 

The first line read, “When the going gets tough, well, why not just make the going easier?” Her thesis is opposition to the dumbing down (my phrase) of the test that qualifies one for college. “The test will no longer include fancy words, otherwise known as a rich vocabulary…”

 

Yes, I’ll give my protag French lessons back in high school on a one-to-one basis by her English teacher.

 

Voila!