The Good Words
For all my stories I have a mental list of the Good Words. Sometimes, when I am annoyed with myself, I count the Good Words (on my fingers because there are not that many) and put them in the calculator with the total word count of their story and work out a ratio.
For example, a story I'm fighting with currently is 209k and has five Good Words. If I am feeling generous I might include another thirteen. That's 11635:1.
It's gratifying when other people identify the Good Words and interesting when they don't. I'm not sure anyone noticed the five truly Good Words mentioned above but several people agreed with me on the thirteen. And even they aren't in the top ten of commented upon words. Who can tell how these things will go.
When I am reading I frequently exclaim, "Gosh, those are Good Words," only I might not use gosh. It is so pleasing, so thrilling. The sentences we collect, talks nicely about this. Then there are the really exceptionally Good Words I can recite without even trying to remember them.
The reason I don't write many reviews of books I read is my inability to be coherent in the face of these Good Words and also that these things are so specific. I could quote some of the Good Words, that I found to be such, and you might not at all. Anything I find interesting is due to my own interests.
That said, this is all a bit of a preamble to my talking more about some of my favourite Good Words.