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8 Smiley Face Writing Tricks. Add Zest to Your Writing…. 1. Expanded Moment. Instead of speeding past a moment, writers often emphasize it by “expanding” the action. Don’t attempt to write about the entire ski trip. Pick just one event and describe it well.
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8 Smiley Face Writing Tricks • Add Zest to Your Writing…
1. Expanded Moment • Instead of speeding past a moment, writers often emphasize it by “expanding” the action. Don’t attempt to write about the entire ski trip. Pick just one event and describe it well. • Example – I sat down, crossed my legs, flipped my hair away from my face, and began to write (Evan).
2. Sensory Details for Effect • Instead of general, vague descriptions, specific sensory details help the reader visualize the person, place, thing or idea, that the writer is describing. • Sensory Details appeal to the reader’s sense of … smell, taste, touch, sound, sight. • See example on next slide
Example of Sensory • The water giggled and danced down the rocks. • Turpentine smells tinged the edge of our noses. • Razor sharp blades of grass cut…
3. Hyphenated Modifier • Hyphenated adjectives often cause the reader to “ sit up and take notice.” Example • It was one of those please-don’t-make-me-go-to-school mornings .
4. Full Circle Ending • One effective way to wrap up a piece of writing is to repeat a phrase - perhaps with slightly different wording – from the beginning of the writing. • Example – All the neighbors thought Aunt Matilda a little strange. They had thought so when she …. On second thought, maybe not everyone thought Aunt Matilda a little strange.
Pay Dirt My garden is an important part of my summer. It gives me that I- need- a- break -time. My back yard was not only a place of solace, it was a scene from believe-it or-not. The yard and the garden are bathed in shadows. Big trees ring the fence like soldiers and often a fox or various wildlife parades through the back bushes. Amidst this calm scene this July something caught my eye. Slowly a gigantic owl with the wing span the size of a jet plane swooped in. Paying no attention to me, he moved through the pine trees like an Olympic gymnast and he clutched with his beak a transparent plastic bag. I took a double take. Yes, it was some strange version of a glad bag, sandwich size, floating in the bird’s jaws. The bag fell from his mouth and landed some 3 feet from me. Leaning over to reach for the fallen prey, I found in my hand a roll of dollar bills neatly closed inside a zip lock. My garden somehow that day had become a magic ATM machine. May be there is more to gardening than quiet time… Maybe there is something to the term…pay dirt.
5. Magic Three • Three groups of words, usually separated by commas, that create a poetic rhythm or add support for a point. • Example – I love playing hide-and-seek with my friends in our woods, jumping rope on the school playground, and swinging on the old tire at Grandma’s.
6. Figurative Language • No literal comparisons add “spice” to writing and can help paint a more vivid picture for the reader • Simile – The gravestones are crooked, like teeth badly in need of braces. • Metaphor - The old rat got away with it! • Hyperbole – The test has a million questions. • Personification – The trees danced in the wind. • Onomatopoeia – meow, hiss ---idiom – expression not to be taken literally she has a green thumb
ExampleDuring our hunting adventures, boring, brown sticks would become rifles, my miniature poodle would turn into a fierce hunting dog, and teeny ant hills would grow before our eyes to monstrous mounds of dirt. We would travel through the knee- high grass that tickled our legs like spiders. When there was a slight breeze, we would take cover because we believed with all our hearts that it would soon become a horrible hurricane named Hunter.
7. Repetition for Effect • Writers often repeat specially chosen words or phrases to make a point, to stress certain ideas for the reader. • Example- I never played Peter Pan and flew to Never- Never Land. I was never Cinderella getting ready for the Ball to dance the night away with Prince Charming. I was never Jane waiting for Tarzan in our tree house .
8. Humor • Writers know the value of laughter, even subtle humor can turn a boring paper into one that can raise someone’s spirits. • Example – You, yes, you Justin, were the guilty one who, while I took off my shoes to enjoy the hot pavement in early spring, put a frog in them. I didn’t look at my shoes when I put them back on. It was the squish that gave your plot away… (Elizabeth).