Taking Risks with Language
- Include figurative language
- Utilize keen, sharp verbs–and fewer adverbs!
Instead of ran quickly, say dash,
and instead of walked slowly, say crawled
- Try exact nouns for authenticity and clarity. It will make it seem you know what you are talking about and it will bring a clearer picture of what you are talking about.
If you are writing about going to the beach, don’t say you saw birds. Tell what kind of birds they are. Are they gulls?
- Include appropriate use of alliteration, rhyme, and sound devices
- Some words should be a bit new to you–you are stretching as a writer.
- Use adjectives that illuminate, using many different senses
- Figurative Language? Like what? Similes, metaphors, hyperbole, personification, etc.
- Blah: The town was small and run-down.
- Better: The gray, tired town was just small enough that the large oak at the south end of town hid it completely from the view of most travelers of State Route 55.
The town being described as tired is personification. Also, its hard for a whole town to be hidden by a tree.
- Blah: Martha was fast. She ran faster than anyone else in her grade.
- Better: Anyone who watched Martha run said she must have had a tornado for a father and a rocket for a mother. The girl was that fast. (this is a hyperbole)
- Figurative Language? Like what? Similes, metaphors, hyperbole, personification, etc.
- Blah: He heard beautiful music–the most amazing music he’d ever heard. He stood perfectly still, listening, until he forgot everything else.
- Better: The music was sunlight and racing barefoot in summer. It was cool water in a tall glass, laughter, the best dream he’d ever had. He froze, letting wave after wave crash over him until everything else was washing away, and finally, just he was left, like foam weightless on top of this ocean of sound.
Music, here, is being described with metaphors and similes.
