Smiley-Face Tricks

By Mary Ellen Ledbetter

In order to make their prose and poetry “sing,” writers use various techniques to develop their unique voices. Observe these techniques while reading, and incorporate them in your own writing.

MAGIC 3 - Three parallel groups of words, usually separated by commas, that create a poetic rhythm or add support for a point, especially when the items have their own modifiers:

In those woods, I spent hours LISTENING to the wind rustle the leaves, CLIMBING trees and spying on nesting birds, and GIVING the occasional wild growl to scare away any pink-flowered girls who might be riding their bikes too closely to my secret entrance.

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE - Non-literal comparisons - such as similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole, onomatopoeia, symbolism, irony, alliteration, assonance, and so on - add “spice” to writing and can help paint a more vivid picture for the reader:

The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses on its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. (Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting)

SPECIFIC DETAILS FOR EFFECT - Instead of general, vague descriptions, specific sensory details help the reader visualize the person, place, thing, or idea

It’s one of those experiences where you want to CALL A RADIO STATION and tell your problems to SOME GUY WHO CALLS HIMSELF DR. MYKE but who isn’t more of a doctor than your pet hamster is, one of those experiences where you want to READ A SAPPY HARLEQUIN NOVEL and LISTEN TO BARRY MANILOWE with a BOX OF BONBONS AS YOUR BEST FRIEND, one of those experiences where you wouldn’t be surprised if someone came up to you and asked EXACTLY WHAT TIME YESTERDAY YOU WERE BORN. Yeah, one of those.

REPETITION FOR EFFECT - Writers often repeat specially chosen words or phrases to make a point, to stress certain ideas for the reader.

The veranda is your only shelter AWAY FROM the sister in bed asleep, AWAY FROM the brother who plays in the tree house in the field, AWAY FROM your chores that await you.

EXPANDED MOMENT - Instead of “speeding” past a moment, writers often emphasize it by “expanding” the actions.

But no, I had to go to school. And as I said before, I had to listen to my math teacher preach about numbers and letters and figures…I was tired of hearing her annoying voice lecture about ‘a=b divided by x.’ I glared at the small black hands on the clock, silently threatening them to go faster. But they didn’t listen, I caught myself wishing I were on white sand and looking down at almost transparent pale-blue water with Josh at my side…I don’t belong in some dumb math class. I belong on the beach, where I can soak my feet in caressing water and let the wind wander its way through my chestnut-colored hair and sip Dr. Pepper all day long.

HUMOR - Whenever possible and appropriate, inject a little humor to keep your reader awake.

He laughed?  I’m nothing. I’m the rear end of nothing, and the devil himself smiled at me.

HYPHENATED MODIFIERS - When you connect two adjectives or adverbs together with a hyphen, it lends an air of originality and sophistication to your writing.

She’s got this blond hair, with dark highlights, parted in the middle, down past her shoulders, and straight as a preacher. She’s got big green eyes that all guys admire and all girls envy, and this I’m-so-beautiful-and-I-know-it body, you know, like every other super model.

FULL-CIRCLE ENDING - When you include an image at the beginning of a piece of writing and then mentioning it again at the end, it gives your piece a sense of closure.

Beginning:
Hey you, with the green and neon-orange striped shoelaces, you who always pulled my old frazzled white one in math. Hey you, who always added your versions of ‘art’ to my math problems for Mrs. Smith’ss class so that 9 x 7 = 64 turned out to be a train with Puffs of smoke and two boxcars and made me get an 83 instead of a 93 since Mrs. C. doesn’t count locomotives as correct answers.

Ending:
Now Justin still sits behind me in math with his neon-green and orange striped shoelaces and pulls on my old white frazzled ones. He still draws zombies on my homework, but he hasn’t dumped another pitcher of Kool-Aid on me - - not yet at least. Oh, and by the way, in case you’re wondering, his first words when he opened his eyes were, ‘It was James Kenton who hid your clothes and made you walk around in a chicken suit…I’m not that mean.