Dear Gather Jammers:
ItEUR(TM)s Prose Week once more only at SunWinks! Each week, we alternate between the topic pertaining in order to prose type and a topic pertaining in order to poetic technique.
For days gone by a range of SunWinks! columns specialized in Prose Style, weEUR(TM)ve been referring to exactly what it requires for you to craft lively, successful prose. Bottom line is, the very best writers, like the greatest athletes, are lean along with mean. Lean equals mean! If your prose isnEUR(TM)t lean, nobody are completely aware of or perhaps care what you mean!
Off the top of my head, here are the rules:
Use smaller sized words.
Use fewer words.
Prefer concrete terms as well as images to abstractions.
Prefer active voice (verb form) to be able to passive.
Always make an effort to work using a strong, transitive (vs. intransitive) verb in position with the verb EURoeto beEUR (is, are, was, etc.)
Never make use involving an adjective plus a noun each moment a better noun will perform the job.
Never work using an adverb plus a verb each time a stronger verb will do the job.
Be precise, use the best word, and always be sure you may be declaring that which you mean to.
In style guide right after style book, I discover the identical guidelines up along with on the line.
HereEUR(TM)s the personal essay I posted a couple of days ago. I believed it could be instructive permit you see how I pared it down as well as punched it up. And Also how it could have been even better.
WHAT I WROTE, FINALLY
WHAT I MIGHT HAVE BUT DIDNEUR(TM)T SETTLE FOR
Behind our house there's an English Garden in regards in order to the size of the squash court.
ThereEUR(TM)s a garden region at the actual rear of our home thatEUR(TM)s concerning 15 feet by 30 feet.
It features the concrete table together with concrete benches and a concrete birdbath. It's walled about a couple of sides by simply colonnades involving arborvitae twelve feet tall.
Technically, EURoeColonnades involving twelve-foot-tall arborvitae wall your garden on a couple of sidesEUR would have been even better, getting rid of the particular EURoeto beEUR verb as well as passive construction EURoeIt is walledEURbyEUR. I made a choice to lead with almost all the wall idea. HoweverEUR
A rule we havenEUR(TM)t discussed is: avoid writing a string regarding sentences regarding similar size as well as construction. The idea sounds ham-handed and sing-song, unless youEUR(TM)re Papa Hemingway. These a couple of sentences would be better yet written as one, thus: EURoeWalled on 2 factors by simply colonnades regarding arborvitaeEUR , it features a new concrete tableEUREUR
Voila! all three problems solved! IEUR(TM)ve gotten rid in the EURoeto beEUR verb and furthermore the parallel construction and also led with the wall image.
There are rows of tall trees running along two sides.
A majestic rotunda of your maple tree dominates your near finish in the garden.
A big maple tree is an acronym from 1 end of the garden.
Rows of garden lights when marked out the particular paths and additionally the birdbath had were built along with a fountain within the center; each ceased working virtually as soon even as moved in. We rent your house, and also though we both work, we couldn't justify keeping which type of luxury in property we didn't own. Your exact same went for the in-ground sprinkler system.
There used to become lights inside the ground alongside your paths.
Once or perhaps twice we paid you to definitely weed the particular plot, however had been letting it visit seed for a lot of years. The Particular blackberry vines overwhelming the area stood as high as, well, an elephant's eye.
There were blackberry vines as high as I am.
(EURoeelephantEUR(TM)s eyeEUR is an allusion to the song EURoeOklahomaEUR)
Underneath that, any thick carpet of ivy overran the ornamental flowers and also anything else that when grew there.
Ivy covered the bottom where ornamental flowers as well as other plants utilized to grow.
It had even overgrown the smallish alder tree to some height involving ten feet, obscuring it as completely and also opaquely as a leafy, emerald nun's habit.
Completely hiding the particular trunk.
I was only the wee bit chagrined upon seeing Donna, our boarder, picking the actual blackberries off the particular brambles and
I really was embarrassedEUR
An illustration of litotes (understatement)
decided for you to reclaim your garden to obtain a composing grotto.
decided I wished to clean your garden up and use it as a location with regard to doing my writing.
First I pulled out the actual blackberry vines. Several with the stalks appearing out of the floor had been woody as well as thick as bamboo.
surprisingly thick and hard.
I hacked on the maple along with alder saplings as well as raked your sun-yellow maple leaves out in the ivy. Your wind showed up as well as buttered your garden again, twice, and twice more I raked the ivy.
Scattered leaves all more than the garden
EURoebuttered your gardenEUR is a metaphor
After your third time, Sir Leafs-a-lot provides pretty much exhausted his ammunition.
The maple tree has lost nearly all of its leaves.
Personification, pun, and also metaphor
Now I arrive for the overrun alder.
At this point, IEUR(TM)ve plainly to the process involving pulling just about all that ivy down off your alder tree.
Thinking I was just going to pull your vines off the actual tree trunk, I quickly got a real possibility check. The ivy vines had been as thick as my thumb and as woody as the tree underneath, and wrapped across the trunk and also limbs within the strangleholds of a vintage witchEUR(TM)s arthritic claws.
Wrapped tightly round the trunk and going across the limbs in all directions
a simile
I cut via the actual thick ivy roots up as well as down the tree inside a hundred locations having a pair of long-handled pruning shears, and also pulled off the actual ivy clump simply by tenacious clump.
(Cleaner yet: EURoeI cut by means of your thick roots in the hundred locations together with long-handled pruning shearsEUREUR)
With problems one clump in a time.
The Prompt
Find a flaccid bit of writing regarding yours. Rewrite it utilizing the above guidelines to make it tighter and much more vivid. Display us each versions.
Put SunWE inside the title along with tags.
Share this post together with Gather Creating essential group.
Indicate in one technique or perhaps another which devices or even techniques I needs for you to be focusing to. (If addressing todayEUR(TM)s, put Lean along with Suggest inside the title field.)
This prompt will not flip into a pumpkin weekly (or even two) via today. If your piece isnEUR(TM)t completed inside the subsequent week or two, obtain it throughout whenever you can. This really is supposed being fun.
I will remark upon every submission and include a hyperlink to it within the next column.
If you'll such as a bit a lot more academic critiqueEUR"but nevertheless really helpful as well as positiveEUR"include the phrase "rigorous" within your post (e.g. "rigorous critique wanted").
Responses to become able to previous prompts below. Allow me determine if I missed yours.
As ever,
Doug
Anti-Poetry
ONE LEG ANNE GOES FOR A New SWIM. ( STRONG LANGUAGE)
by Terry Collett |
Family Poem
by Pam Brittain
A troop no more
by Priya P. |
Organic Matter!
by G.M. Jackson
No less...
by Janey M. |
Scraping Your Hull
by DW |
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