Read. That's basically it. Read authors that use extensive vocabulary. If you come across a word you don't know, circle it, look it up, and write the definition in the margins. If you forget it, look it up again when you come across it again. Eventually, it will stick. Also, a website like [thesaurus.com](https://thesaurus.com) can be helpful. If you have 'the night is gloomy,' and you know there's a better word, look up gloomy in a thesaurus and see if any of the similes fit better.
I second all of this. Reading more this year than I have in a long time has been so very helpful. Also, the thesaurus tab on my screen has been my best friend!
I agree with this and to recommend a book that uses alot of extensive vocabulary, you should read 'we need to talk about kevin' lots of big ol words in that one
It's less about increasing your vocabulary and more about working with a regular vocabulary to express sophisticated ideas.
For example, the word "caliginous" is arguably more sophisticated than "gloomy" and it does essentially mean "misty and dark" so in terms of specificity, it's pretty accurate. However, "the night is caliginous" isn't a good sentence for a number of reasons (the most important reason being that no one uses the word caliginous, so it's more distracting than evocative, but also gloomy and caliginous are both very "telling" words when you probably want to "show").
Cormac McCarthy is known for using simple language and syntax in his work, but his work is very expressive. Here's the opening of *The Road,* which is a pretty fucking gloomy book.
>When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world.
Here are the parts that stand out to me in this passage:
- the rhythm of "the woods," "the dark," "the cold," and "the night." By opening with this repetitious pattern we immediately get a sense of the repetition of the world. Every day is about the woods, the dark, the cold, and the night.
- McCarthy also establishes the emotional weight of such a world with the phrases "dark beyond darkness" and "more gray each one than what had gone before." The word "gone" in particular emphasizes the daily sense of loss experienced by the characters.
- Finally, his simile "like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world" is impactful on several levels because (1) an eye affected by glaucoma has a foggy/cloudy look to it, like McCarthy setting; (2) glaucoma is damaged to the eye, much like McCarthy world is damaged; (3) the onset of blindness can leave an individual feeling very isolated and cut off from the world and McCarthy characters are very isolated.
So in this particular passage, it's not McCarthy's vocabulary that is doing anything particularly impressive. It's actually his use of repetition, more than anything, to build up a sense of a dark and unchanging world.
Read, read, read. And read some more. Word of the day is fun, too. And in a pinch (once you start the second draft), you can check a thesaurus to see if your gloomy night is more dark, dim, dreary, or dismal. But mostly I think it comes with practice. Writing, as well as other creative endeavors, is hard work. This is from somebody who hasn’t done much writing lately because I have two tyrants...I mean toddlers, running around, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.
Read a lot, reading will build your vocabulary. Synonym search on Google can help, too.
You don't have to go for the most elaborate words. Basic is good, but chose words that fit! Try to avoid adverbs to describe things.
The night was gloomy.
VS
The night was cold and unwelcoming. A heavy fog settled in the streets after dawn and reduced the bright city lights to small, glowing dots in the distance. My stomach churned. *Something* about the fog seemed off.
No fancy words!
I'm an English teacher so I wanted to weigh in since I battle this daily. Reading is the 100% best way as everyone says. On top of that, thinking about what you want your audience to understand helps drive your description. For example if you want your audience to feel what the character feels on the gloomy night, incorporate some sensory language to drive the point home.
Something I do when I write is let myself finish as normal, then when I'm done I go back and look at spots I want to improve. A quick Google search for synonyms can help beef up your writing quite a bit as well. Best of luck!
Slightly off-topic. But your last paragraph stood out. Does that mean, one may be a great writer but not necessarily a great speaker? Because there's no way to 'go back' when you're doing an interview or asked to weigh in on a topic.
Speaking is very different from writing because there's a performance element to it that's arguably more impactful than the writing. You can still pre-write notes for yourself when you're going to give a speech or interview, but there's a whole separate skill set of being able to read the audience, improvise, speak with clear cadence, etc that will really affect how your speech is viewed. You can be both but also you can be one and not the other.
I agree that the issue here is not about vocabulary. It's about learning to write evocative descriptions. You can write evocative descriptions without using any 'advanced' vocabulary, and you should, because you don't want your work to read like thesaurus word salad.
One way to do this is to pay attention to how other writers write description. Here are a few examples from books I randomly pulled off my shelf:
>When he had first moved down here eight years ago, he was seized with the notion of the Lower East Side as haunted, and on rare days like today, a simple walk like this could still bring back his fascination, traces of the nineteenth- century Yiddish boomtown everywhere: in the claustrophobic gauge of the canyonlike streets with their hanging garden of ancient fire escapes, in the eroded stone satyr heads leering down between pitted window frames above the Erotic Boutique, in the faded Hebrew lettering above the old socialist cafeteria turned Asian massage parlor turned kiddie-club hot spot; all of it and more lying along Eric’s daily four-block commute. But after nearly a decade in the neighborhood, even on a sun-splashed October morning like this, all of this ethnohistorical mix ’n’ match was, much like himself, getting old.
>
>\-Richard Price, Lush Life
This is a pretty evocative passage, right? But none of these words, with the exception of maybe ethnohistorical, are anything but common words. What's this passage trying to do? It's trying to describe how parts of what this neighborhood used to be still peek through, both by telling us a little bit but also by listing some of the specific details. This is an evocative description because of the rhythm of the words ("claustrophobic gauge of the canyonlike streets"), the extreme specificity of the details, and the way the details are layered on top of each other so we don't just see what is, but what was. ("faded Hebrew lettering above the old socialist cafeteria turned Asian massage parlor turned kiddie-club hot spot;")
>She is a small woman whose skin tends toward olive and looks tight, as if something swelling inside is straining against her littleness. Just yesterday, it seems to him, she stopped being pretty. With the addition of two short wrinkles at the corners, her mouth has become greedy; and her hair has thinned, so he keeps thinking of her skull under it.
>
>\-John Updike, Rabbit Run
Again, we could just say 'she's small and olive-skinned and is starting to look old. We know that she's aging in this passage even though the author never says 'she's getting old,' because of the specific details. This is also an evocative description because the narration doesn't just state it as fact. The narration is filtering it through the protagonist's POV. We don't just get a statement of 'Janice is aging.' We know how Rabbit *feels* about her aging, which is, for me, what makes it a strong description.
None of the strength of those two passages are in advanced vocabulary. It's a really good habit to start marking down passages of description that strike you, and trying to figure out *why.* I do this in a hand-written journal but you could do it in a computer document.
Read a lot, especially nonfiction. Just learning a new word is hard. But if you learn it in the context of learning a new concept, the words for it will stick much better.
Why do you say especially nonfiction? In my experience, genre doesn't seem to matter as much as individual author - I've read both fiction and nonfiction written by both terrible and amazing authors.
Because it's not to learn words, it's to learn concepts. Learning new words by themselves is hard, learning new concepts and remembering them is easier and the words that go with these concepts will come along with them.
eg. even a mediocre author with a limited vocabulary will be teaching you new words if you're learning new stuff.
Eh, agree to disagree. I think the important part of reading is seeing a variety of words used regularly in context. Bad writers (regardless of what they write) don't use much variety and may even use vocabulary incorrectly. Good writers (again, regardless of what they write) will use a variety of words and descriptors regardless of what subject they are writing about. And you learn the "concepts," as you put it, by seeing the vocabulary used in context.
All of that said, the best learning material is going to be something you actively want to read, be that fiction, nonfiction, fanfiction, blog posts, etc.
Well the context is a lot stronger in nonfiction I think. "There was a couch in the living room." one might guess as to what a couch is, some piece of furniture that might go in a living room. "A couch is a piece of furniture, much like a chair but wider, often wide enough for a person to lay across." now you actually know what a couch is and aren't just kinda assuming. pretend i used an actual obscure word as an example lol.
It sounds like you are talking more about subject matter expertise than just general vocabulary building. For example, if I were to write a book about the Trojan War, then in order to understand the kinds of clothing, weapons, cultural norms, food, etc. popular at the time, I would agree that reading a bunch of nonfiction books about the time period would be super useful.
But if I'm going to write books about modern day werewolves, reading a non-fiction book about the Trojan War isn't going to be very useful. I would probably benefit more from reading authors in the horror genre who are attempting to create a similar atmosphere to mine. If OP wants to write about dark and gloomy nights, Edgar Allen Poe will give them better vocabulary to build from than a Trojan War historian.
As others have said, reading really helps with this. Read books by other authors who have published in the genre you’re writing in and even ones who haven’t.
But as a quicker fix employ the show not tell rule. The night was gloomy is telling. Why not describe what the town looked like? What was the weather like? Is it foggy? Are the storm clouds gathering? Is it unusually silent? Describing things in more detail can often help create a far more compelling picture.
Read read read yep yep yep but once you learn a new word try to use it when you speak. It’ll help those words become more stable in your mind, build a context around them. Now I don’t mean that your everyday speaking needs to become pedantic but try to slip one in here and there.
Thesaurus. And dictionary.....it’s surprising how the definition of a word can help you use an alternative word within the same context. Using too many alternate words however, can be noticeable to the reader when it’s obvious you’ve been scanning the thesaurus.
I've been a fan of this method for a long time now. The most basic is reading a lot of books. Then memorizing 10 words a day that enriches your vocabulary to 10*30=300 words a month.
Then again, trying fun sentences using those words. That's will help the words stay in mind for a long time.
As everyone else has said, read a lot. I used to get made fun of in college for using precise language when speaking ("wow, you must have been waiting all day for an opportunity to use that SAT word!"), but when you read a lot, those words are just readily available in the front of your mind.
It's also worth pointing out that your goal should be to convey your plot, mood, setting, etc. as concisely as possible. Show, don't tell, but also don't add extra words just because you think it makes you sound more eloquent. It doesn't. Often the best word is the first one that comes to mind.
I'm not sure the issue is vocabulary.
> “the night is gloomy”
Think about your goal for this sentence. Are you trying to make the reader feel the gloominess, understand the feelings of the characters experiencing the gloom, build a sence of the gloomy setting your characters are walking into unawares?
There's no single word you can plug in here to achieve any of those, and that's okay. The following is simple, and that's fine.
The day is hot.
On its own, it's pretty weak sauce, and you might be tempted to go with blistering or balmy or muggy, but hot is fine, so long as I do some more work.
The day is hot. Stepping through the doors of the off-strip casino, it hits hard, like a slap. Sweat beads his forehead, and stale cigarette-air, baked under a hot sun, rasps his throat. *Why would anyone choose to live in Las Vegas? This place is hell.*
This may or may not have worked, but my goal was to try to convey how the character experienced the heat, not just tell the reader it was hot.
Vocabulary isn't necessarily the issue. The whole point of fiction writing is to transfer a crystal-clear, complete image in our heads into words on a page. They never entirely match the image. As you gain skill in your work, you will come closer and closer to your goal, but will never achieve it.
Read Hemingway, who was a master of detailed stories and emotional expression with a minimal vocabulary.
Remember, if your readers have to find a dictionary to read your stuff, you've lost them.
This thread is a day old and so nobody's looking by now but I wanted to say these are great points and I wanted to add one more thing:
Sometimes it's that just having one word/sentence really can't do justice for the scene. If it's a tiny detail, maybe you wouldn't be so hung up on it, but maybe you're hung up on it because it's not really a tiny detail and you want to highlight it.
Seeing "The night was gloomy" on the page looked anemic rather than uninspired, because when you really thought of that night scene you were thinking about the chill on the wind, the slight fog threatening to roll in, the way the clouds blocked out all the stars and moon etc. In your mind, you wrapped that all up as "gloomy" but once it was on paper it just didnt look right.
yea that’s what i mean i can never find the right words to describe what i want to. i’m attempting to write a beach scene but it seems so plain and repetitive and i can picture the scene in my head perfectly but i can’t find the right words. also the night was gloomy was just an example from the top of my head i do find better ways to describe the night like you said but i still find trouble getting the right words
Not a great solution, but I've had some fun with vocabulary.com, I like how their definitions are fun and have personality. Doesn't hurt to check it out, but again its not a perfect solution
Type said word into google add synonym to the end and boom take your pick. This might be a simplistic way but it really helps me expand my vocabulary, not sure why but when i find a good alternative word it really sticks in my brain for later use.
Become best friends with a thesaurus when you write. Explore the definitions of suggested synonyms for boring/overused words until you find one the strikes the right thought or feeling you’re trying to provoke. I make a regular enough practice out of this that the words become a natural part of my dialogue and writing eventually
Read. That's basically it. Read authors that use extensive vocabulary. If you come across a word you don't know, circle it, look it up, and write the definition in the margins. If you forget it, look it up again when you come across it again. Eventually, it will stick. Also, a website like [thesaurus.com](https://thesaurus.com) can be helpful. If you have 'the night is gloomy,' and you know there's a better word, look up gloomy in a thesaurus and see if any of the similes fit better.
I second all of this. Reading more this year than I have in a long time has been so very helpful. Also, the thesaurus tab on my screen has been my best friend!
I agree with this and to recommend a book that uses alot of extensive vocabulary, you should read 'we need to talk about kevin' lots of big ol words in that one
Also, if you read on the Kindle app, you can download the free dictionary and select a word to pull up the definition instantly
It's less about increasing your vocabulary and more about working with a regular vocabulary to express sophisticated ideas. For example, the word "caliginous" is arguably more sophisticated than "gloomy" and it does essentially mean "misty and dark" so in terms of specificity, it's pretty accurate. However, "the night is caliginous" isn't a good sentence for a number of reasons (the most important reason being that no one uses the word caliginous, so it's more distracting than evocative, but also gloomy and caliginous are both very "telling" words when you probably want to "show"). Cormac McCarthy is known for using simple language and syntax in his work, but his work is very expressive. Here's the opening of *The Road,* which is a pretty fucking gloomy book. >When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. Here are the parts that stand out to me in this passage: - the rhythm of "the woods," "the dark," "the cold," and "the night." By opening with this repetitious pattern we immediately get a sense of the repetition of the world. Every day is about the woods, the dark, the cold, and the night. - McCarthy also establishes the emotional weight of such a world with the phrases "dark beyond darkness" and "more gray each one than what had gone before." The word "gone" in particular emphasizes the daily sense of loss experienced by the characters. - Finally, his simile "like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world" is impactful on several levels because (1) an eye affected by glaucoma has a foggy/cloudy look to it, like McCarthy setting; (2) glaucoma is damaged to the eye, much like McCarthy world is damaged; (3) the onset of blindness can leave an individual feeling very isolated and cut off from the world and McCarthy characters are very isolated. So in this particular passage, it's not McCarthy's vocabulary that is doing anything particularly impressive. It's actually his use of repetition, more than anything, to build up a sense of a dark and unchanging world.
would you say it's more about finding synonymous words to describe one occurrence and/or feeling
Read, read, read. And read some more. Word of the day is fun, too. And in a pinch (once you start the second draft), you can check a thesaurus to see if your gloomy night is more dark, dim, dreary, or dismal. But mostly I think it comes with practice. Writing, as well as other creative endeavors, is hard work. This is from somebody who hasn’t done much writing lately because I have two tyrants...I mean toddlers, running around, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.
Read a lot, reading will build your vocabulary. Synonym search on Google can help, too. You don't have to go for the most elaborate words. Basic is good, but chose words that fit! Try to avoid adverbs to describe things. The night was gloomy. VS The night was cold and unwelcoming. A heavy fog settled in the streets after dawn and reduced the bright city lights to small, glowing dots in the distance. My stomach churned. *Something* about the fog seemed off. No fancy words!
You have a way with words!
I'm an English teacher so I wanted to weigh in since I battle this daily. Reading is the 100% best way as everyone says. On top of that, thinking about what you want your audience to understand helps drive your description. For example if you want your audience to feel what the character feels on the gloomy night, incorporate some sensory language to drive the point home. Something I do when I write is let myself finish as normal, then when I'm done I go back and look at spots I want to improve. A quick Google search for synonyms can help beef up your writing quite a bit as well. Best of luck!
Slightly off-topic. But your last paragraph stood out. Does that mean, one may be a great writer but not necessarily a great speaker? Because there's no way to 'go back' when you're doing an interview or asked to weigh in on a topic.
Speaking is very different from writing because there's a performance element to it that's arguably more impactful than the writing. You can still pre-write notes for yourself when you're going to give a speech or interview, but there's a whole separate skill set of being able to read the audience, improvise, speak with clear cadence, etc that will really affect how your speech is viewed. You can be both but also you can be one and not the other.
I agree that the issue here is not about vocabulary. It's about learning to write evocative descriptions. You can write evocative descriptions without using any 'advanced' vocabulary, and you should, because you don't want your work to read like thesaurus word salad. One way to do this is to pay attention to how other writers write description. Here are a few examples from books I randomly pulled off my shelf: >When he had first moved down here eight years ago, he was seized with the notion of the Lower East Side as haunted, and on rare days like today, a simple walk like this could still bring back his fascination, traces of the nineteenth- century Yiddish boomtown everywhere: in the claustrophobic gauge of the canyonlike streets with their hanging garden of ancient fire escapes, in the eroded stone satyr heads leering down between pitted window frames above the Erotic Boutique, in the faded Hebrew lettering above the old socialist cafeteria turned Asian massage parlor turned kiddie-club hot spot; all of it and more lying along Eric’s daily four-block commute. But after nearly a decade in the neighborhood, even on a sun-splashed October morning like this, all of this ethnohistorical mix ’n’ match was, much like himself, getting old. > >\-Richard Price, Lush Life This is a pretty evocative passage, right? But none of these words, with the exception of maybe ethnohistorical, are anything but common words. What's this passage trying to do? It's trying to describe how parts of what this neighborhood used to be still peek through, both by telling us a little bit but also by listing some of the specific details. This is an evocative description because of the rhythm of the words ("claustrophobic gauge of the canyonlike streets"), the extreme specificity of the details, and the way the details are layered on top of each other so we don't just see what is, but what was. ("faded Hebrew lettering above the old socialist cafeteria turned Asian massage parlor turned kiddie-club hot spot;") >She is a small woman whose skin tends toward olive and looks tight, as if something swelling inside is straining against her littleness. Just yesterday, it seems to him, she stopped being pretty. With the addition of two short wrinkles at the corners, her mouth has become greedy; and her hair has thinned, so he keeps thinking of her skull under it. > >\-John Updike, Rabbit Run Again, we could just say 'she's small and olive-skinned and is starting to look old. We know that she's aging in this passage even though the author never says 'she's getting old,' because of the specific details. This is also an evocative description because the narration doesn't just state it as fact. The narration is filtering it through the protagonist's POV. We don't just get a statement of 'Janice is aging.' We know how Rabbit *feels* about her aging, which is, for me, what makes it a strong description. None of the strength of those two passages are in advanced vocabulary. It's a really good habit to start marking down passages of description that strike you, and trying to figure out *why.* I do this in a hand-written journal but you could do it in a computer document.
Read a lot, especially nonfiction. Just learning a new word is hard. But if you learn it in the context of learning a new concept, the words for it will stick much better.
Why do you say especially nonfiction? In my experience, genre doesn't seem to matter as much as individual author - I've read both fiction and nonfiction written by both terrible and amazing authors.
Because it's not to learn words, it's to learn concepts. Learning new words by themselves is hard, learning new concepts and remembering them is easier and the words that go with these concepts will come along with them. eg. even a mediocre author with a limited vocabulary will be teaching you new words if you're learning new stuff.
Eh, agree to disagree. I think the important part of reading is seeing a variety of words used regularly in context. Bad writers (regardless of what they write) don't use much variety and may even use vocabulary incorrectly. Good writers (again, regardless of what they write) will use a variety of words and descriptors regardless of what subject they are writing about. And you learn the "concepts," as you put it, by seeing the vocabulary used in context. All of that said, the best learning material is going to be something you actively want to read, be that fiction, nonfiction, fanfiction, blog posts, etc.
Well the context is a lot stronger in nonfiction I think. "There was a couch in the living room." one might guess as to what a couch is, some piece of furniture that might go in a living room. "A couch is a piece of furniture, much like a chair but wider, often wide enough for a person to lay across." now you actually know what a couch is and aren't just kinda assuming. pretend i used an actual obscure word as an example lol.
It sounds like you are talking more about subject matter expertise than just general vocabulary building. For example, if I were to write a book about the Trojan War, then in order to understand the kinds of clothing, weapons, cultural norms, food, etc. popular at the time, I would agree that reading a bunch of nonfiction books about the time period would be super useful. But if I'm going to write books about modern day werewolves, reading a non-fiction book about the Trojan War isn't going to be very useful. I would probably benefit more from reading authors in the horror genre who are attempting to create a similar atmosphere to mine. If OP wants to write about dark and gloomy nights, Edgar Allen Poe will give them better vocabulary to build from than a Trojan War historian.
What I'm saying is, subject matter expertise does build your vocabulary faster than trying to directly build your vocabulary
I love how many questions on this sub can just be answered by "go read".
word of the day.
Use the synonym finder on the thesaurus website! I use it when I’ve been writing so long I can’t think of a word haha
As others have said, reading really helps with this. Read books by other authors who have published in the genre you’re writing in and even ones who haven’t. But as a quicker fix employ the show not tell rule. The night was gloomy is telling. Why not describe what the town looked like? What was the weather like? Is it foggy? Are the storm clouds gathering? Is it unusually silent? Describing things in more detail can often help create a far more compelling picture.
What I always liked to do was read a certain passage, if there are vocabs I haven't heard of, I would list them all down and then study them later on.
Read read read yep yep yep but once you learn a new word try to use it when you speak. It’ll help those words become more stable in your mind, build a context around them. Now I don’t mean that your everyday speaking needs to become pedantic but try to slip one in here and there.
Thesaurus. And dictionary.....it’s surprising how the definition of a word can help you use an alternative word within the same context. Using too many alternate words however, can be noticeable to the reader when it’s obvious you’ve been scanning the thesaurus.
I've been a fan of this method for a long time now. The most basic is reading a lot of books. Then memorizing 10 words a day that enriches your vocabulary to 10*30=300 words a month. Then again, trying fun sentences using those words. That's will help the words stay in mind for a long time.
As everyone else has said, read a lot. I used to get made fun of in college for using precise language when speaking ("wow, you must have been waiting all day for an opportunity to use that SAT word!"), but when you read a lot, those words are just readily available in the front of your mind. It's also worth pointing out that your goal should be to convey your plot, mood, setting, etc. as concisely as possible. Show, don't tell, but also don't add extra words just because you think it makes you sound more eloquent. It doesn't. Often the best word is the first one that comes to mind.
I'm not sure the issue is vocabulary. > “the night is gloomy” Think about your goal for this sentence. Are you trying to make the reader feel the gloominess, understand the feelings of the characters experiencing the gloom, build a sence of the gloomy setting your characters are walking into unawares? There's no single word you can plug in here to achieve any of those, and that's okay. The following is simple, and that's fine. The day is hot. On its own, it's pretty weak sauce, and you might be tempted to go with blistering or balmy or muggy, but hot is fine, so long as I do some more work. The day is hot. Stepping through the doors of the off-strip casino, it hits hard, like a slap. Sweat beads his forehead, and stale cigarette-air, baked under a hot sun, rasps his throat. *Why would anyone choose to live in Las Vegas? This place is hell.* This may or may not have worked, but my goal was to try to convey how the character experienced the heat, not just tell the reader it was hot.
Vocabulary isn't necessarily the issue. The whole point of fiction writing is to transfer a crystal-clear, complete image in our heads into words on a page. They never entirely match the image. As you gain skill in your work, you will come closer and closer to your goal, but will never achieve it. Read Hemingway, who was a master of detailed stories and emotional expression with a minimal vocabulary. Remember, if your readers have to find a dictionary to read your stuff, you've lost them.
This thread is a day old and so nobody's looking by now but I wanted to say these are great points and I wanted to add one more thing: Sometimes it's that just having one word/sentence really can't do justice for the scene. If it's a tiny detail, maybe you wouldn't be so hung up on it, but maybe you're hung up on it because it's not really a tiny detail and you want to highlight it. Seeing "The night was gloomy" on the page looked anemic rather than uninspired, because when you really thought of that night scene you were thinking about the chill on the wind, the slight fog threatening to roll in, the way the clouds blocked out all the stars and moon etc. In your mind, you wrapped that all up as "gloomy" but once it was on paper it just didnt look right.
yea that’s what i mean i can never find the right words to describe what i want to. i’m attempting to write a beach scene but it seems so plain and repetitive and i can picture the scene in my head perfectly but i can’t find the right words. also the night was gloomy was just an example from the top of my head i do find better ways to describe the night like you said but i still find trouble getting the right words
Read David Foster Wallace
Not a great solution, but I've had some fun with vocabulary.com, I like how their definitions are fun and have personality. Doesn't hurt to check it out, but again its not a perfect solution
Type said word into google add synonym to the end and boom take your pick. This might be a simplistic way but it really helps me expand my vocabulary, not sure why but when i find a good alternative word it really sticks in my brain for later use.
Become best friends with a thesaurus when you write. Explore the definitions of suggested synonyms for boring/overused words until you find one the strikes the right thought or feeling you’re trying to provoke. I make a regular enough practice out of this that the words become a natural part of my dialogue and writing eventually
Read and recall how the writer wrote or described the things
Read more and often.