Using Descriptive Details in Prose

1. Using Descriptive Details in Prose Honors Language Arts 10 Creative Writing Unit

2. Similes and Metaphors • Similes and metaphors should: • support the controlling impression. • be simple. • be visually arresting. • integrate with other types of details.

3. Reminder Similes and Metaphors both are: figures of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared. Are these good similes/metaphors? Why or why not? • The puppy was as cute as a newborn baby. • The thunderstorm was a hurricane.

4. Similes/metaphors should support the controlling impression. • If your similes/metaphors stray from your controlling impression, it becomes distracting and may confuse your reader.

5. When the 1st graders argued with each other, Mrs. Nelson never yelled at her students, but rather went over to them individually and listened to their side of the story. She then would speak to them with a voice soft as a lamb. VS: When the 1st graders argued with each other, Mrs. Nelson never yelled at her students, but rather went over to them individually and listened to their side of the story. She then would speak to them with a voice rough as sandpaper. Controlling Impression: Gentle Notice how the first example has a metaphor more connected to the controlling impression? The second example takes away from the controlling impression.

6. Similes and Metaphors may also connect to the person’s interests: A creative decision Controlling Impression: Tired When his hand relaxed, his fingers naturally folded into his palm as if they continued to crave the keyboard. His eyes were tired and began to look like a blinking cursor on a computer screen. When he would speak there would be long pauses like his brain was hitting the space button too many times. Does this writing flow? What do these similes/metaphors have in common? What else does this passage suggest about the tired person?

7. Similes/Metaphors should be simple and clear. • Similes and metaphors should be useful, concise, and then perhaps memorable as well, in that order. If the task of creating one becomes toil, you’re trying too hard, and your exertions will show (mostly because they will seem out of place).

8. “Kate inched over her own thoughts like a measuring worm.” — East of Eden, by John Steinbeck Vs. • She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again. –anonymous student essay found online

9. Similes/Metaphors should be visually arresting • Similes and metaphors are intended to paint a picture for the reader in order to endow a person, place, or thing with resonance. They help to create the mood/tone of your writing!

10. “Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away, as if I’m nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water.” — The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood What mood is this simile creating?

11. "Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as a flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.“ - Charles Dickens, "A Christmas Carol" What kind of character is Scrooge according to the similes?

12. Similes/Metaphors should integrate with other supporting details. • “Miss Caroline was no more than twenty-one. She had bright auburn hair, pink cheeks, and wore crimson fingernail polish. She also wore high-heeled pumps and a red-and-white-striped dress. She looked and smelled like a peppermint drop. She boarded across the street one door down from us in MisMaudie Atkinson’s upstairs front room, and when Miss Maudie introduced us to her, Jem was in a haze for days.” -Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

13. Adjectives Likewise, prose without similes/metaphors, but descriptive adjectives should work together to create a certain mood.

14. “A few minutes after Angela left with the hikers, Jacob sauntered over to take her place by my side. He looked fourteen, maybe fifteen, and had long, glossy black hair pulled back with a rubber band at the nape of his neck. His skin was beautiful, silky and russet-colored; his eyes were dark, set deep above the high planes of his cheek-bones. He still had just a hint of childish roundness left around his chin. Altogether, a very pretty face. However, my positive opinion of his looks was damaged by the first words out of his mouth.” -Stephanie Meyer, Twilight What is the controlling impression the writer is supporting through her descriptions?

15. Your main goal is to support your controlling impression , and now and then to throw and image as refreshing as a snowball at your reader (strive to use 3 in your essay). If you strive to be an original metaphorist in each sentence, you may either induce writer’s block or write precious prose, which will take ten years to become a novel.