Corrie Martin 1

Right now, take a 3 minutes to make a grocery list for someone who will shop for you. Now, review the list. How specific do you need to be to get the items you really want? Is bread just bread—or it it cracked-wheat sourdough? Is milk just milk—or is it a quarter of vanilla almond milk? Sometimes, details are everything. 2

 In the movie Being John Malkovich, the viewers experience being inside John Malkovich’s head. They see and hear what he experiences. It is a powerful medium! Good writers have the ability to put their readers into the moment the writer experiences.  One strategy is using less general summary—avoid lengthy background descriptions. Instead, concentrate on detailed descriptions of specific points. 3

Our senses are powerful tools to express our perspective. We do see, taste, smell, touch, hear! Read this passage from The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury: The house shuddered, oak bone on bone, its bared skeleton cringing from the heat, its wire, its nerves revealed as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins and capillaries quiver in the scalded air. Help, help! Fire! Run, run! Heat snapped mirrors like the brittle winter ice. And the voices wailed Fire, fire, run, run, like a tragic nursery rhyme, a dozen voices, high, low, like children dying in a forest, alone, alone. And the voices fading as the wires popped their sheathings like hot chestnuts. One, two, three, four, five voices died. (71) When you write about an event, consider if your reader can experience your experience? What details make it vivid? What needs to be added? 4

Make the reader stick to it– even if they aren’t into your topic or writing style. Start with less background—entice them into the midst of your piece. People don’t want to hear how you got to the roller coaster; they want to experience what the roller coaster was like! EXAMPLE: As we hurtled down the incline, the car clinging precariously to the tracks, my arms rose in the air and the chili-dog rose to the back of my throat. Why on earth had I agreed to go on this roller coaster? 5

You can enhance your meaning with clarity/concreteness. EXAMPLES:  He wore ragged shoes.  His feet displayed a dilapidated pair of Air Jordans complete with a flapping sole and a hole where the threads had worn out.  big flower  gigantic sunflower bending under weight of seeds 6

Avoid clichés such as: blind as a bat, last straw, crystal clear, stop and smell the roses. Avoid qualifiers such as: too, very, so, really Instead, add details and/or figurative language to create a comparison of an idea to object. EXAMPLE: I knew I really needed to stop and smell the roses.  Miserably, I realized I had rushed through every experience during the past year; looking back, it felt like trees rushing past a train window at full speed. 7

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Don’t state obvious. Kicking the puppy is cruel; you don’t need to state that it is cruel. Try to use inference by actively leaving the obvious information out. Read descriptive passage from Maya Angelou on the next slide; think about the impact if she had been explicit about her point. What does she gain by making the reader draw their own conclusion? 9

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