Words With Impact: Deepen Vocabulary Connections

Workshop: Discover Words That Sing

“The writer is attempting to find that place in a reader’s consciousness where myth already exists, to free the ghosts and archetypes that stalk about and haunt.”

                                                                                                                                  Jack Hodgins

Word Ideas.

 Color Exercise

1. Choose any color except green or blue. Do a five to ten minute free-write on anything that comes to mind for that color whether cliché or not. Remember to include phrases that are already used in common language like yellowbelly or red-eye. Don’t limit yourself to any particular category—just write down any thoughts that come to mind regardless of how unusual.

Brainstorm basics give us a foundation to build from. We develop an instinct for when we need to connect details with our emotions, and also what particular methods will be most effective. Often the brainstorm exercises can help to find the bridges to connect with our characters in their worlds in order to deepen their reality. And there are so many varieties to choose from. It’s good to have a basic familiar style to jumpstart ideas and then one you often resist to stretch the idea muscles.

Note: I have not read the essay from which the following excerpt comes, and have no knowledge or idea of what the original purpose is. My sole interest is the intriguing way he references one color and the possibilities it raises to develop word language literally and figuratively.

On Being Blue 
A Philosophical Inquiry 
by 
William Gass

“Blue pencils, blue noses, blue movies, laws, blue legs and stockings, the language of birds, bees, and flowers as sung by longshoremen, that lead-like look the skin has when affected by cold, contusion, sickness, fear; the rotten rum or gin they call blue ruin and the blue devils of its delirium; Russian cats and oysters, a withheld or imprisoned breath, the blue they say that diamonds have, deep holes in the ocean and the blazers which English athletes earn that gentlemen may wear; afflictions of the spirit — dumps, mopes, Mondays — all that's dismal — lowdown gloomy music, Nova Scotians, cyanosis, hair rinse, bluing, bleach; the rare blue dahlia like that blue moon shrewd things happen only once in, or the call for trumps in whist (but who remembers whist or what the death of unplayed games is like?), and correspondingly the flag, Blue Peter, which is our signal for getting under way; a swift pitch, Confederate money, ……and, when in Hell, its neatly landscaped rows of concrete huts and gas-blue flames; social registers, examination booklets, blue bloods, balls, and bonnets, beards, coats, collars, chips, and cheese . . . the pedantic, indecent and censorious . . . watered twilight, sour sea: …..just as it's stood for fidelity.”

What words most caught your attention or interest? Why? Which did you connect with and which do find confusing?

Which choice of words or categories he uses would fit most naturally into your own story’s genre?

Action Steps:

2. Take the list you wrote with your color choice and now divide it into the categories with which William Gass has referenced the color blue. For example, nature includes flowers, bees, and ocean. History includes Civil War and the Holocaust. Metaphors include gloom and fidelity. Don’t worry that some are confusing—just do the ones you recognize.

3. Now look back at your own list. Which references are literal and which are figurative? What categories can you place your connections in? What areas are missing? Can you add to them?

Share: Which category and word captured your curiosity?

Read deep, marcy

Nourish Voice

Workshop: An Introduction to Writing for Children and Young Adults

“Write for the child within you.” Jane Yolen

Narration comes in many voices. There is the voice of the story, or idea and the shape it takes, and there is an author’s voice as well. Some storytellers can identify their voice fairly quickly and for some it takes time to develop. Like a musician, for some voices range across many notes and others take one sound and develop it deeply.

A guest author once shared that he tried to write across different ages and in different genres but every time he tried at some point his writing voice became a fourteen to sixteen year old male. So he stayed with that narrator and wrote deeply.

Author Jane Yolen has written in almost every age and genre in children’s literature. Story first, she says. She both listens to her characters and she searches for a connection. “Reach deep inside yourself and find out who you were before you became what you are, and then you will discover that the child is there, very much alive, and informing most of your adult decisions.”

Nourishing voice is an ongoing thread that begins with the seed of idea and develops throughout any project. As we study in this workshop we’ll be going into more details re voice and also see that voice is integral whether we’re discussing character or plot or tone.

For now though, begin to take notice as you experiment with ideas what voice you tend to lean towards. Is it quiet or noisy, tentative or firm, adventurous or cautious?

When you discover the voice that captures your heart chances are you discover the excitement and passion that writing for any age requires. Especially for children and young adults because our stories may be their first glimpse into imagination and new possibilities. 

Action Steps:

Go to: http://www.marcyweydemuller.com/resources.html and scroll down to 31 Creative Freewrites.

1.     Do brief freewrite notes on numbers 12 to 17 from the idea file. Give yourself 8 to ten minutes per memory to write down everything you can think of. Don’t stop for sentence structure or punctuation.

2.     Did your moments all fall into a particular age category or were they spread out? If, for example, most of your moments happened in grades 4 to six then you are leaning into a middle-grade voice connection.

3.     Which ones that you wrote connected the strongest either from a positive or negative reaction?

Share: Did any of your recollections surprise you? Why?

Read deep, marcy

Only Connect: Overview Basics

Workshop: An Introduction to Writing for Children and Young Adults

“An idea is something that makes a sound in the heart.” Katherine Paterson

Once in a while have you ever seen a movie, or read a book, that both friends and critics have given high applause to, and yet it has left you bored or cold or both? The quality is evident, no argument, yet still you just don’t respond. A strong possibility is that the storyline or the underlying threads did not engage your heart. It did not connect. Talent is a required component to any art form, but it is not enough if it doesn’t engage with the intended audience.  And for the example above, you may not have been the intended audience.

Only connection is as high a value as talent in literature for children and young adults. Actually it is probably higher. It is why some children will cling to a poorly written story, or ask to hear a song over and over that grates on our nerves. It may be a concept that doesn’t match any ‘rules’ of a genre, but readers inhale it like dessert. The classic storybook “Goodnight Moon” does not fall into ‘normal’ guidelines for writing to that age group, yet it affects all generations with its heart relationship to that whisper of falling asleep for a child without vocabulary to express their feelings.

Often when we are writing we are translating. We have an idea—a character—a feeling—a fear—a hope that we are trying to put into words, to first translate into something more tangible, and then second to share it with another person.

“One thing we can do is to share with children works of the imagination—those sounds deepest in the human heart, often couched in symbol and metaphor. These don’t give children packaged answers. They invite children to go within themselves to listen to the sounds of their own hearts.” Katherine Paterson

Old Testament prophet Habbakuk first saw a vision, and then was told to write it ‘plainly’ so that a runner could take it.  That’s the craft part of developing our ideas into form: poem, short story, or article that we can make ‘plain’, make our concepts understandable.

Only when we are writing for children and young adults it seems, sometimes, that we are crossing a culture gap as well as generational and we struggle to find the words. We need to find the connections that bridge our hearts, and at the same time keeps the imagination free to expand into new ideas—not packaged ones. New sounds—new stories—new art. Fresh hope.

Action Steps:

1.    Write a definition of dream either as a word or as a concept.

2.    Suppose you were trying to explain this word to someone who doesn’t speak your language. How would you do it?

3.    Then read, The Dream Keeper, a poem by Langston Hughes. http://allpoetry.com/The-Dream-Keeper

4.    What sound does it make in your heart?

Share: How does his poem connect with your feelings and definition?

Read deep, marcy

Connect With Maps

“All this time the Guard was looking at her, first through a telescope, then through a microscope, and then through an opera-glass.”  Lewis Carroll

Alice does not change being Alice despite the various ways in which she is being observed, but the perception of her is altered by the method by which the Guard chooses to see her.

Just as images and word pictures feed our imagination through metaphors, so can a study of map-making enlarge and enrich our connections with the places we inhabit. In his book, the Geographer’s Art, Peter Haggett says that, “If the historian uses mirrors to look back and the physicist uses mirrors to look forward, then the geographer’s use of the mirror analogy lies in a different dimension—that of space.” What exactly do we see in that space regionally and historically? Are places mapped by linear distance as in a conventional map or by spatial configuration?

Haggett gives an example from a vacation he once took at a lakeside village nestled in the Austrian mountains. As he traveled back and forth across the lake by boat he realized that the lakeside did not quite measure up to the conventional map. Some routes he took were fast routes and others slow. Which speed was taken would influence the map form or scale of the lake. He put together four different sketches to try to determine how nine locations reflected or related to the lake itself based on: distance, time of journey, cost of journey and frequency of service. He concluded that each map showed a “different aspect of the spatial structure of this settlement.” His experiment on vacation opened up a whole new outlook on how maps can measure location and identity of place.

Today we can click our computers for directions and are given a choice to find a destination by conventional map, or street view or aerial. Why do we choose which version we do? How does your character approach space in his world? Why does it matter what she sees?

Journal Prompt:

1.     Visit a favorite place of your own where you like to sit and watch the view. Take a pair of binoculars and a magnifying glass. Pick one focused spot and look at it intently for a few minutes each time using first your own natural sight and then each of these lenses.

2.     Write down the differences you see with each one.

Share: Did you see something you’ve never noticed before? Can you adapt the experience for your character?