Readers: Do they care about word choice?

Good or bad writing isn't determined by the "poured in a three pointer"."
Good or bad writing is determined by quotes and structure and scene-setting.

Sure, cliche is tired and boring, but it's what surrounds the cliche that matters most.

 

And, no, readers don't give a shit

 

I'm curious about citing "poured in X three-pointers" as an example of bad. I was taught, and thus have always, used different ways to describe certain actions to keep the telling of it fresh. For example, if a team scores four goal line TDs, I'll say "punched in" one time, and "broke through" another, just so I have options to describe what is essentially the same action.

 

I also wouldn't consider "poured in" a cliche. It's just an oft-used, quick, visual and alternative way of saying "made with great ease and abundance." I get the feeling some people want to homogenize the language so that everybody is using the exact same words in every story.

 

I didn't say it was cliche. I thought it was dumb because I get a mental image of somebody holding a pitcher and tilting it forward to make the liquid three-pointer into the net.

It's not about homogenizing. There's just better ways to tell a story than to go back and put play-by-play in while using different verbs for making shots.

It's kind of like what Snuka said. Though I don't necessarily agree about the bad writing.
You'll never have to work in "poured" because you don't have eight grafs on making shots.

 

And sometimes, that's a damn accurate image. Sometimes, a scorer scores with that kind of ease.

If I have a problem with "poured," it's that it's overused. Not that it's used at all.

 

You won't in the same story if you're doing your gamer properly. But when you write about the same team for the same paper 30 times in a season, that's a different story.

 

By your logic, if I'm on a baseball beat, by the time I get to the 86th game I'm writing, "socked a haymaker over the cheap seats."

Change the stories, not the verbs.