Words With Impact: Draw Poetry Techniques Into Fiction Clichés

Workshop: Discover Words That Sing

                         “When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.”         John F. Kennedy

Here we continue to look more intently at the language we use on a day-to-day basis and examine ways to enhance it. It’s amazing how often we speak in clichés and obviously we try to avoid them in our writing—both fiction and non-fiction. We sometimes forget, though, that often clichés came into being because of their unique and fresh way of perspective.

Although we’re focusing on poetry techniques in these next exercises, the ability to capture a poetic eye freshens all our writing—across styles and across genres. Vignettes also require this type of insight due to the sparseness of length.

Non-fiction pieces are also brought alive with poetic images and metaphors. Here’s another excerpt from an essay by Patricia Hampl in “I Could Tell You Stories.” Note how her description combined with simile draw us to share her experience.

“The stranger’s remark, launched in the dark of the Greyhound, floated across the human landscape like the lingering tone of a struck bell from village church, and joined all the silence that ever was, as I turned my face to the window where the world was rushing by along the slow river.”

Action Steps: Practice Clichés

1. Take well-known clichés and shift them around. Make a list of as many common ones that you can think of and then crisscross them just for fun. Some will be hilarious and ridiculous. And some might spark a new phrase.

Example. “Flat as a pancake, good as gold” becomes flat as gold, good as a pancake.

2. This is really entertaining in a small group of writers and rather surprising at some of the images that can come to the surface.

3. Practice shifting old concepts around until they become new and fresh.

Share: Choose one or two of your favorites. Why—funny or serious?

           

Read deep, marcy