Making stuff sound pretty

Parallel Structure a. Do you want to build a snowman or ride our bikes? b.Do you want to build a snowman or go riding on our bikes? a. I like riding my bike better than building a snowman. b. I like riding my bike better than a snowman. a. He spoke viciously, with a vengeance, and assertively. b. He spoke viciously, angrily, and assertively.

Next, circle the endings that make the sentences below parallel. 1. Olympic athletes must dream big and ( be hard workers / work hard ). 2. You should watch three Olympic sports: curling, skiing, and ( skating / hockey ). 3. I hope the American Olympians win more medals than ( Russia does / the Russian Olympians do ).

PRACTICE Find a sentence in your essay and re-write it to make it parallel. If you can’t find a sentence to use from your essay, make up a new sentence with parallel structure that you could use in your essay. HINT: This works really well for thesis statements

VIVID DESCRIPTIONS  Show, don’t tell  Use figurative language  Instead of writing, “I had never felt anything like it before in my entire life,” take the time to try and describe what that feeling was, and then decide how best to convey that feeling to the reader. Your readers will thank you for it.

 The workday went by slowly. I was really excited to start my vacation.  I watched the clock, which seemed to be moving more slowly than usual. At exactly 5 p.m., it was like a bolt of lightning hit my chair. I jumped up, grabbed my bag, and zoomed off to board a plane for paradise. By the time I got to the airport, I could almost smell the saltwater.

 I hit a home run yesterday. I've never felt so good in my life. My teammates finally appreciated me, because it won the game, and I'm glad all the hard work paid off. I realized what it meant to succeed.  We were tied, 4-4, in the ninth inning with barely enough sunlight for another at-bat. I looked at a strike. On the next pitch, I tightened my core, swung the bat low, and felt it make contact in the middle of the ball. I was almost to second base by the time it crashed into the scoreboard beyond the right- field fence.

 He sits on the couch holding his guitar.  His eyes are closed, and he’s cradling the guitar in his arms like a lover. It’s as if he’s trying to hold on to something that wants to let go.

If string theory is really true, then the entire world is made up of strings, and I cannot tie a single one. This past summer, I applied for my very first job at a small, busy bakery and café in my neighborhood. I knew that if I were hired there, I would learn how to use a cash register, prepare sandwiches, and take cake orders. I imagined that my biggest struggle would be catering to demanding New Yorkers, but I never thought that it would be the benign act of tying a box that would become both my biggest obstacle and greatest teacher. On my first day of work in late August, one of the bakery’s employees hastily explained the procedure. It seemed simple: wrap the string around your hand, then wrap it three times around the box both ways, and knot it. I recited the anthem in my head, “three times, turn it, three times, knot” until it became my mantra. After observing multiple employees, it was clear that anyone tying the box could complete it in a matter of seconds. For weeks, I labored endlessly, only to watch the strong and small pieces of my pride unravel each time I tried. As I rushed to discreetly shove half-tied cake boxes into plastic bags, I could not help but wonder what was wrong with me. I have learned Mozart arias, memorized the functional groups in organic chemistry, and calculated the anti- derivatives of functions that I will probably never use in real life—all with a modest amount of energy. For some reason though, after a month’s effort, tying string around a cake box still left me in a quandary.

PRACTICE  Go through your essay and circle language that is vague, generic, awkward, unclear, confusing, repetitive, slangy, clichéd, basic, or stale.  Go back through your essay and replace these circled words with vivid vocabulary. Tips:  Try adding dialogue  Use sensory language  Be descriptive  Be specific, not vague  Incorporate at least three different types of figurative language into your essay. HINT: Make sure your revisions don’t seem forced!