Other Words for "Look" + With meanings | List for writers
Many people create lists of synonyms for the word 'said,' but what about the word 'look'? Here are some synonyms that I enjoy using in my writing, along with their meanings for your reference. While all these words relate to 'look,' they each carry distinct meanings and nuances, so I thought it would be helpful to provide meanings for each one.
Gaze - To look steadily and intently, especially in admiration or thought.
Glance - A brief or hurried look.
Peek - A quick and typically secretive look.
Peer - To look with difficulty or concentration.
Scan - To look over quickly but thoroughly.
Observe - To watch carefully and attentively.
Inspect - To look at closely in order to assess condition or quality.
Stare - To look fixedly or vacantly at someone or something.
Glimpse - To see or perceive briefly or partially.
Eye - To look or stare at intently.
Peruse - To read or examine something with great care.
Scrutinize - To examine or inspect closely and thoroughly.
Behold - To see or observe a thing or person, especially a remarkable one.
Witness - To see something happen, typically a significant event.
Spot - To see, notice, or recognize someone or something.
Contemplate - To look thoughtfully for a long time at.
Sight - To suddenly or unexpectedly see something or someone.
Ogle - To stare at in a lecherous manner.
Leer - To look or gaze in an unpleasant, malicious way.
Gawk - To stare openly and stupidly.
Gape - To stare with one's mouth open wide, in amazement.
Squint - To look with eyes partially closed.
Regard - To consider or think of in a specified way.
Admire - To regard with pleasure, wonder, and approval.
Skim - To look through quickly to gain superficial knowledge.
Reconnoiter - To make a military observation of a region.
Flick - To look or move the eyes quickly.
Rake - To look through something rapidly and unsystematically.
Glare - To look angrily or fiercely.
Peep - To look quickly and secretly through an opening.
Focus - To concentrate one's visual effort on.
Discover - To find or realize something not clear before.
Spot-check - To examine something briefly or at random.
Devour - To look over with eager enthusiasm.
Examine - To inspect in detail to determine condition.
Feast one's eyes - To look at something with great enjoyment.
Catch sight of - To suddenly or unexpectedly see.
Clap eyes on - To suddenly see someone or something.
Set eyes on - To look at, especially for the first time.
Take a dekko - Colloquial for taking a look.
Leer at - To look or gaze in a suggestive manner.
Rubberneck - To stare at something in a foolish way.
Make out - To manage to see or read with difficulty.
Lay eyes on - To see or look at.
Pore over - To look at or read something intently.
Ogle at - To look at in a lecherous or predatory way.
Pry - To look or inquire into something in a determined manner.
Dart - To look quickly or furtively.
Drink in - To look at with great enjoyment or fascination.
Bask in - To look at or enjoy something for a period of time.
Calling all aspiring storytellers with hearts full of whimsy! Get ready to sprinkle a touch of enchantment into your scenes with my Scene Wo
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So, you published a story on AO3 and you’re starting to collect kudos. What are these magical things and how do you know if you’re doing well? As someone who plays around with kudo statistics for fun, here’s what I’ve learned:
1. Most people don’t leave kudos.
Look at some of your favorite stories (the ones that are both fun AND well-written) and you’re going to see that the hit-to-kudo ratio is shockingly low. Like, 15% or less and 15% is RARE. You’re lucky if you get one-in-ten people to hit that kudo button. So don’t be discouraged if you get 50 hits and 5 kudos. Those are actually great numbers!
2. The more popular your story is, the worse that the hit-to-kudo ratio can be.
Look at the front page for any fandom (sorted by kudos) and you’ll find that many of the top stories don’t even have a 5% hit-to-kudo ratio. There are a few reasons for this. The first one is simply that people are going to give a popular story a chance even if it’s not something that they’d normally read, so you get hits from people outside of your intended readership. Those people give it a look, confirm that it’s not for them, and then click off. That’s a hit you wouldn’t have had in a less popular story and those add up. The same thing can happen for long fics where people see your story in their feed again and again, so they finally give it a look, only to confirm that they were right and it’s not for them. That’s not the only issue with long fic hit counts, though!
3. Longer fics have worse hit-to-kudo ratios than short fics
The other reason that you might see terrible hit-to-kudo ratios for front page fics is that a lot of the top fics are long fics and longer stories tend to have worse hit-to-kudo ratios. My theory on this is that it has a lot to do with how AO3 tracks hits. If you’re logged into an account, then you count as 1 hit. If you’re not logged in, then you get counted based on IP address, meaning that one person can get counted multiple times if they’re reading over multiple devices or on one device over multiple connections. I played around with my phone once and I was able to give 2 “kudos” to the same fic (as a guest) because I started reading at home and then finished reading while at work, meaning that my IP changed. I was also able to give another kudo from my personal computer. So that’s 1 me counting as 3 separate hits. I made up for it by giving kudos for each one, but most readers won’t know to do that.
This issue is not going to have a large impact on short stories where people read it in one go, but for a longer story? Yeah, you’re going to see artificial hit inflation. I’m going to give an example of this by looking at the homepage for the MCU fandom. (Which I’m using because it’s popular, meaning a large reader base to help normalize the data, and I used to be in it, so I know which stories are worth recommending)
Mistake on the Part of Nature by idiopathicsmile clocks in at a single chapter with just 1,274 words. It has 306,790 hits and 30,410 kudos, giving it a hit-to-kudo ratio of 9.9%
Hide A Heart Of War by RayShippouUchiha has two chapters and 13,617 words, which is still within the single sitting length for most readers. It has 245,554 hits and 20,298 kudos, giving it a hit-to-kudo ratio of 8.2%
This, You Protect by owlet has 33 chapters and 64,326 words. It has 575,980 and 23,340 kudos, giving it a hit-to-kudo ratio of just 4.1%!
All of these fics are awesome, all of the fics are rated T, and all of the fics of similar quality in writing, but as the chapter and word counts goes up, the hit-to-kudo ratio goes down.
This is true even if you control for author. Here’s the numbers for the three stories I’ve finished in the Yu-Gi-Oh fandom (the number in red is the hit-to-kudo ratio):
My long fic might be the most popular in total hits and kudos, but its ratio sucks compared to my short fics.
4. Know what good numbers are for your fandom
I found the lack of meaning behind kudos annoying, so I went into the Yu-Gi-Oh fandom (where I’m currently writing) and took a look at what counted for good kudo numbers to give myself a goal. It’s a smaller fandom, so the kudo numbers are NEVER going to rival the MCU fandom's. There’s just not that many readers. In the Yu-Gi-Oh fandom, anything over ~365 kudos means that you’re in the top 1% of stories (by kudos). Knowing that gave me something to aim for and a reason to get excited when I hit certain kudo milestones. I don’t recommend doing this with short stories because short stories easily fall off the radar, but it’s a fun thing to track with long fics! It certainly gave meaning to the kudos when I was writing Ma’at and that matters because comments are sparse! (More on that in a bit)
5. Explicit stories don’t follow the usual rules
I don’t personally enjoy smut for smuts sake, so I don’t read a lot of sex-heavy stories (I prefer it as a spice, not the main dish), but I have noticed that sex-heavy stories tend to have a much lower hit-to-kudo ratio than stories that are clean or even other E stories that only have a handful of explicit scenes. Not sure what to make of that, but I figured that I should call it out so that the smut writers of the world don’t look at this guide and assume that their awesome writing is bad because the ratios are off!
In Summary:
Don’t just look at how many kudos you have to see if people like your story. Keep in mind that your hits count, too. More hits, more kudos! If you’re working with short fics, a hit-to-kudo ratio of around 10% is great! For long fics, 4% is really good. When I was writing Ma’at, I had an initial hit-to-kudo ratio of about 12%, but it dropped WAY down as the word count grew higher. I’m expecting my current long fic to trend the same. It’s currently at a lovely 12.3%, but I don’t expect THAT to last.
A Note on Comments
No matter how popular your story is, you’re never going to see a lot of comments
My story, Ma’at, is currently in the top 50 stories for Yu-Gi-Oh (sorted by kudos). I have almost 700 kudos and I had over 180 subscribers while the story was in-progress. In spite of that, I never saw more than 25 comments on a given chapter and even that was pretty rare. I normally clocked in between 10 and 15 once the story got popular. This is why I started to look into kudo statistics. Those were my main source of feedback and I wanted to find meaning in them.
“We dropped different numbers of balls at different rates, different heights. We had a ramp. The ramps were at different angles, trying to get the most out of the balls as they hit the actors. After doing the tests, we figured out 35 feet above the deck of the ship was the height we needed our nets. We had these three big nets that held almost 80,000 per net. The balls dropped 35 feet into ramps that projected them towards the stunt guys. It just knocked them over. It was pretty spectacular.”
-Mark Hawker, SFX Coordinator for Pirates of the Caribbean
“It’s amazing to see a bunch of 40 and 50-year-olds turn into three-year-olds all of a sudden. Everybody had to pick up blue balls, hit the other guy in the head. It was like, ’Is it time for the parents to come pick up the kids?’”
-George Marshall Ruge, Stunt Coordinator for Pirates of the Caribbean
#what a cool way to film waves crashing over a boat!!!
Shame on me for not clarifying from the beginning, but this set up was not meant to simulate water. This was to help the SFX team animate the part where the sea goddess, Calypso, turns giant in visual call-back to ancient Greek pottery, and then escapes her human body by exploding into a quarter million crabs.
On Pirates 1-3 if they wanted a big wave to go over the boat, they just straight up dumped giant bucket-tanks of water over the actors (they did this to Kevin McNally and Orlando Bloom in the first movie) or blasted the hull of the ship with water cannons ❤
(Some of the white is smoke from the debris mortars firing too)
If you get this, answer w/ three random facts about yourself and send it to the last seven blogs in your notifs. anon or not, doesn’t matter, let’s get to know the person behind the blog!
Three random facts about me (via mutual request!)
Two of my favorite colors are blue and green { can be any hue/tint/shade, though I sometimes have an affinity for teal :3 }
I have more unread than read books on my bookshelves, but some authors I enjoy reading include Edgar Allan Poe, Brandon Sanderson, Ray Bradbury, and J.R.R. Tolkien.
I also like reading visual novels for different movies, and I have books on the making of Jurassic Park (1993), Labyrinth (1986), and the Haunted Mansion (2003) { the last one of which talks about the first imaginings of the ride back in the 1960s to now }
Just a small snapshot of my interests. Those are all the fun facts for today. Thanks again for the question, iamstartraveller776! XD
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