![]() ![]() They can be combinations of words: Cold sweat. When you’re writing, anything you’ve ever heard or read before is a cliché. Challenge all those verbs to really lift some weight for you. You know the ones: Was, did, had, made, went, looked… One-size-fits-all looks like crap on anyone. Most people use twenty verbs to describe everything from a run in their stocking to the explosion of an atomic bomb. ![]() A terrific exercise is to take a paragraph of someone’s writing who has a really strong style, and using their structure, substitute your own words for theirs, and see how they achieved their effects. I also like Sexton, Eliot, and Brodsky for the poets and Durrell and Les Plesko for prose. I like Dylan Thomas best for this–the Ballad of the Long-Legged Bait. Read poetry aloud and try to heighten in every way your sensitivity to the sound and rhythm and shape of sentences. Learn to look at your sentences, play with them, make sure there’s music, lots of edges and corners to the sounds. It said: “Good enough story, but what’s unique about your sentences?” That was the best advice I ever got. Long ago I got a rejection from the editor of the Santa Monica Review, Jim Krusoe. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |