For the Good of the Book Pt. 5 and BONUS! Pt. 5.5!

December 4, 2011

Hi, peoples!

I'm actually excited for today's writing tip - it's something I feel rather strongly about :)  So I'll forgo the long introductory paragraph and get started!

Don't litter your writing with figures of speech.


That's it, peoples, it's time to go to church! :) 

December 22, 2011

Uuuggghhh...I meant to blog later, continuing this writing tip, but I didn't (obviously)...until now...  Thanks for being patient, nice peoples!

Continuation of the lamely short writing tip:

Figures of speech or commonly used descriptions such as, "then it dawned on her", "butterflies in my stomach", "I racked my brain [for the answer]", "light as a feather", "latch ditch effort"...etc. might ease our writing load, per say, but, I believe in writing we should exercise our creativity.  We should make up our own idioms and quirks, not rely on overused expressions to relay our descriptions or meanings to our readers.  Writing is an activity through which we can create our own languages, worlds, characters (and more!  Oh my!), so there's no reason to describe a girl in love as one who felt "as light as a feather".  Why not call her "a girl who flitted through her day with such effervescent happiness, she reminded those around her of a carefree child"?

Which leads us to our second writing tip of the day!  I think you deserve it after I left my random and unexplained writing tip on my blog for...a long time.  :)  

Since I'm challenging you to avoid figures of speech and am encouraging you to make up your own expression, try exploring new words.  If you read or hear a word and don't know its meaning, write it down (and if possible, the context or sentence you heard it first used in) and look it up in the dictionary later.  Then, try and using your new friend (aka the word) in a sentence.  If you decide to put a more obscure word into your writing, try to explain the meaning of the word in the same sentence.  Are you confused?  Use my sentence a couple paragraphs above, for an example.  You might wonder what "effervescent" means, but as you continue reading, you can deduce from the context it might have something to do with 

a. happiness!!!

b. being carefree!

You can go look up the word now :)

I realize that I could've used better example but I wanted to use the word "effervescent"!  Even so, another way to write a word explained in context would be...

Her new found joy filled her with such effervescent, contagious, overflowing happiness that she couldn't help but share her joy with everyone she met.

So there you go!  Writing tip 5 and 5.5 of today!!!  (More like, "Writing tip of the month"!  :p)

Talk to you later!
"Klarabelle"