ENHANCING YOUR WRITING ENHANCING YOUR WRITING Making your writing meaningful, interesting, and powerful. Expressing your ideas in more vivid, colorful, and beautiful ways.

MAGIC THREE  Three groups of words, usually separated by commas, that create a poetic rhythm or add support for a point, especially when the three word groups have their own modifiers. The look in her eyes was vacant. She seemed confused, disoriented, even lost.

 Non-literal comparisons— such as similes, metaphors, and personification—add “spice” to writing and can help paint a more vivid picture for the reader. FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE  Justice is blind and, at times, deaf.  The ancient, corroded engine wheezed its death cough.

DETAILS FOR EFFECT  Instead of general, vague descriptions, use specific sensory details help the reader visualize the person, place, thing, or idea being described. Five Senses. The bottle glowed in luminous blinking intervals as the fireflies played a fitful game of hide and seek inside.

REPETITION FOR EFFECT  Writers often repeat specially chosen words or phrases to make a point, to stress certain ideas for the readers. The cold attacked her body like a thousand tiny pin-pricks. It was cold, cold like she had never felt before, cold she knew she never wanted to feel again.

EXPANDED MOMENT  Instead of “speeding” past a moment, writers often emphasize it by “expanding” the action. She stopped, looked out at the cars whizzing by on the busy street, checked her watch, straightened her skirt and pushed the door open.

HUMOR  Writers know the value of laughter; even subtle humor can help turn a “boring” paper into one that can raise someone’s spirits. His skis flew out in opposite directions as he tumbled down the snow packed slope, finally coming to an awkward halt in a soft pillow of white powder, his body sprawled out as if ready to make another snow angel.

HYPHENATED MODIFIERS  Sometimes a new way of saying something can make all the difference; hyphenated adjectives often cause the reader to “sit up and take notice.” But be careful not to overuse this technique in a single paper. What terrible disapoint-ment would he feel upon seeing not a roasted turkey and sweet potatoes but Chinese food?

FULL CIRCLE ENDING  It is often effective to use a special technique - tying the introduction and conclusion together that effectively “wrapping up” the piece. This can be done by referring to a phrase, antidote, comment from the beginning of the piece.

ACTIVE VERBS  When another writer catches your attention, he is probably using active or strong verbs in most of his sentences. Which interests you more “Batman’s entry into the Joker’s hideout was noisy”, or “Batman blasted his way into the Joker’s hideout”? The use of a strong active verb adds interest. He whipped his head around when he heard the violent crash of glass and metal behind him.

USE ACTIVE VOICE  In passive-voice expressions the verb phrase will always include a form of be, such as am, is, was, were, are, or been. The presence of a be-verb, however, does not necessarily mean that the sentence is in passive voice. Another way to recognize passive-voice sentences is that they may include a "by the..." phrase after the verb; the agent performing the action, if named, is the object of the preposition in this phrase. Not: I am fascinated by her. Instead: She fascinates me.