Using Description- Drawing From Word Lists

Description
It is the recipe for a great narrative. Your job is to make the story a mind movie for your reader. In prior blog posts, you've learned that strategies for using description in your narrative:  Detailing a Person, Place, or Thing,  Elaborating on an Event, Using Sensory Details, and Showing, Not Telling

Today you'll learn another strategy called Drawing from Word Lists.

Drawing from Word Lists 

Using interesting words will give the reader a better visual while reading.  I will usually use simple words in my first write then go back and revise with stronger ones using my thesaurus.  There are many online sites you can use to find stronger words (synonyms).  A free one I use is http://thesaurus.com/.

Example:

I walked home after crashing my bike.

I'd like a stronger word for walked.  I'd like to show my reader how I walked after crashing my bike.
I looked up walk using www.thesaurus.com.  Here is what I got.

Now after crashing my bike, I certainly wouldn't be strutting or prancing.  I can't just use any word on the list, I have to make sure it makes sense.  Sometimes, I look up words in the dictionary after I search on a thesaurus to make sure I'm using it correctly.

I like the word ambled. I looked it up on www.dictionary.com.  Here's what it said:

It means to go at a slow and easy pace.  That's what I want readers to see when they read this sentence.

I'll choose to use the word ambled.  

I ambled home after crashing my bike.

After using this strategy for awhile, you'll notice your vocabulary growing!  It's amazing how fast that happens :0)

Please give some examples that you've used in a comment below.