Chuckle

Some words just do me in.

"Surge" is one of them. Waves surge. Power surges. People do not surge.

"Full-force" is another. What the heck is full-force? All the Power Rangers in one go? It is not an adjective nor an adverb. People never do anything 'full force.' It is a made up word and as such, should live in the nebulous land of our subconscious, like unicorns and Nessie. Such a thing does not exist.

And Chuckle. I can't believe how many times I read chuckle. Who chuckles? People don't "chuckle." They laugh, snigger, snicker, snort, squeal, squeak, hoot,  howl - any manner of strange onomatopoetic words that can substitute for the sounds made during a bout of happy laughter, even chortle but chuckle? What would that sound like? Honestly, when flipping through a book at Chapters or Barnes & Noble or even Amazon, the moment I read "chuckle," I'm outta there. Seriously. Put it down and walk away. My sense of quality has already been hurt.

Chuckle is a cliche, an indicator of a standard of writing that is just a little lower than my time is worth, so sorry, no chuckling for me. I'd rather have a good snort and be done with it. But I promise you and myself that my characters will never, ever, ever chuckle.

Unless of course they're the smooth, squeaky-clean bad guy and I want you to hate them because of their squeaky-cleanness. Oooh, now there's a Batman villain for you. The Chuckler. 

Off to write it. Holy Halapalooza Batman! Got goose bumps just thinking of it...

At least I didn't surge..