EXERCISE: A word, indeed...
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writercisesOriginal posting Jan. 17, 2018
This is one that a professor in Boulder, Colorado used to suggest as a prompt for a short story. Basically, flip through the dictionary and pick out one of those unusual words, the ones that you don’t see used much at all. Read the definition, think about it, and then...
Put your story together, including your unusual word, in such a way that the way it is used, the characters’ actions, the context shows what the word means, without ever explicitly defining it. Imply the meaning, so that the reader can figure it out, just from the way you have used it!
The professor passed out 3x5 cards with words on them for us to use. I still remember that my word was incunabulum. I won’t subject you to my story, but it did manage to convey that some people prize having a book from before the printing press, without ever being quite that blatant about it. It was a lot of fun, too!
So, there’s your task. Flip through the dictionary, pick an unusual word out, and then... use it in your short story so that we understand it from the context.
Might take a look at http://www.dictionary.com — the word of the day often is pretty unusual, although I don’t see any easy way to flip through the pages online?
Write!
This is one that a professor in Boulder, Colorado used to suggest as a prompt for a short story. Basically, flip through the dictionary and pick out one of those unusual words, the ones that you don’t see used much at all. Read the definition, think about it, and then...
Put your story together, including your unusual word, in such a way that the way it is used, the characters’ actions, the context shows what the word means, without ever explicitly defining it. Imply the meaning, so that the reader can figure it out, just from the way you have used it!
The professor passed out 3x5 cards with words on them for us to use. I still remember that my word was incunabulum. I won’t subject you to my story, but it did manage to convey that some people prize having a book from before the printing press, without ever being quite that blatant about it. It was a lot of fun, too!
So, there’s your task. Flip through the dictionary, pick an unusual word out, and then... use it in your short story so that we understand it from the context.
Might take a look at http://www.dictionary.com — the word of the day often is pretty unusual, although I don’t see any easy way to flip through the pages online?
Write!