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 Smiley-Face Tricks 

Enliven your writing with Smiley-Face Tricks. Smiley-Face Tricks, which are considered compositional risks, are to writing what seasonings are to food – add some Smiley-Face Tricks to your writing to spice things up and create some tasty text!

  1. Rhetorical Question – a question a writer or speaker asks, but does not expect anyone to really answer

Adapted from Mary Ledbetter, with additional examples from Alchemy and Meggy Swann, by Karen Cushman

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 Smiley-Face Tricks 

  • Who would want to go to school year-round?
  • Does that sound like a good idea?
  • Can you imagine the best day ever?

Adapted from Mary Ledbetter, with additional examples from Alchemy and Meggy Swann, by Karen Cushman

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 Smiley-Face Tricks 

Figurative Language – non-literal comparisons which paint a vivid and imaginative picture for the reader. Be sure to avoid clichés when using figurative language. Figurative language includes similes, metaphors, personifications, hyperboles and idioms.

  1. Simile: comparison using LIKE or AS
  • The graveyard stands amid a sea of grass. The gravestones are crooked, like teeth badly in need of braces.
  • Granny was sweet and loving, with gnarled hands and a face like a pickle.
  • Meggy thought he looked more and more like a puppy, all friendliness and no brains.
  • Roger thought she was as friendly as a bag of weasels.
  1. Metaphor: comparison that does not use like or as, but says one thing is another
  • Friends are the chocolate chips in the cookie of life.
  • Sitting on the back step is an old man wearing a milky-white shirt and coal pants.
  • His eyes were hidden by bushy black eyebrows, two caterpillarssleeping on his forehead.
  1. Personification: giving human qualities to non-human things
  • The cookies were calling my name, and I couldn’t resist.
  • The roadway had been worn down to a thin layer of asphalt and lay waiting patiently for many years, stretching farther and farther, trying to get a glimpse of better lands.
  1. Hyperbole: exaggeration for effect
  • The cookies took forever to cool before I could eat one.
  • There is no escaping the light blue sky. It is wherever I am. It goes wherever I go.
  1. Idiom: a phrase which means something different from its literal meaning
  • I’ve been feeling under the weather today.
  • He was ready to throw in the towel when a solution occurred to him.
  • Baseball just isn’t my cup of tea.

Sound devices – Use the sounds of the words, rather than their meanings alone, to emphasize an idea or make a point. Two kinds of sound devices are alliteration and onomatopoeia.

  1. Alliteration: repeated use of a starting consonant sound (not necessarily the same letter)
  • The ice is smooth and slick. The players are fast and fierce.
  • It seemed a poor, puny, paltry sort of house.
  • His childhood hat was once worn atop a hopeful hairy head.
  1. Onomatopoeia: words that sound like the sounds they name
  • Lightening crashed and thunder boomed as rain slashed at the windows.
  1. Sensory Details – Help the reader imagine sights, sounds, smells, tastes and touches with words that appeal to the senses. Sensory details appeal to all five senses, giving the reader a complete picture, going beyond just what is visible. Sensory details help you to show, rather than tell.
  • He opened the door and a small bell tinkled overhead. He walked down the aisle, fingering the coins in his pocket, and stopped in front of the racks of candy, whose shiny foil wrappers reflected the bright overhead lights.
  • A dog barkedin the distance as I walked down the silentwintry street, my breath before me in clouds, frost crackling beneath my feet.
  1. Specific Details– Instead of vague, general descriptions, include specific details to help the reader visualize the person, place, thing or idea the writer is describing
  • Three days ago, while on an excruciatingly long, bumpy bus ride to Estherville for yet another bone-chilling tennis meet, I was listening to my iPod nano on shuffle when the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” came on.
  • He took out his boring-but-comforting lunch: peanut butter and jelly sandwich, banana and one of his mom’s giant homemade chocolate chip cookies.
  1. Vivid/Precise Words – insert words with specific meanings to make your meaning clear
  • Instead of sat, try slouched, relaxed, posed, perched
  • Instead of talked, try whispered, barked, droned,chattered
  • Precise words allow you to say what you mean exactly but with fewer words. Especially be more precise than good, bad, nice, and kind.
  1. Mood Words - Think carefully about the connotation (emotional effect) of the words you use, not just the denotation(dictionary definition). What mood do you want to create? How do you want your readers to feel? Choose words that will help them get there.
  • The stench of his breath forced me to take a step back.
  • The aroma of freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies filled the house.
  1. Sophisticated Vocabulary – Learn and use impressive words to wow the reader.
  • Instead of kind, try benevolent
  • Instead of surprised, try astonished
  • Instead of interesting, try mesmerizing
  1. Dialogue – Instead of summarizing or retelling what you, others or fictional characters said, include the actual words.
  • Summarizing what someone said (Don’t do this!):

As we drove home from soccer practice, I flipped through the radio stationsand came across “Call Me Maybe.” My dad started singing along. I couldn’t believe he knew the words and was singing along. I told him he should never do that in public.

  • Incorporating dialogue by using the actual words (Do this!):

As we drove home from soccer practice, I flipped through the radio stations until I heard, “I just met you-“

“And this is crazy,” my dad chimed in. He continued singing, “Here’s my number, so call me maybe.”

I couldn’t believe he knew the words and was singing along. “Dad, please! I’m going to have nightmares! Promise me you’ll never do that in front of anyone!”

  1. Humor– Where possible and appropriate, inject a little humor to keep your reader awake
  • Talking to my mother is like walking through a minefield. No mater how careful I am, I just might set her off. She sits in the passenger seat, wearing sunglasses that cover her entire face. If she had a pointed nose, she might have been mistaken for a mosquito.
  • I stared at the rabbit in disbelief. I didn’t need some furry Oprah Winfrey telling me what to do.

Parallel Structure – words, phrases or clauses that follow a pattern, such as verbs with the same ending, or nouns followed by modifiers. Parallel structure includes repetition and the Magic Three

  1. Repetition – Repeat specifically chosen words or phrases to emphasize an idea
  • The attic was her only shelter away from the sister in bed asleep, away from the brother that playing in the tree house in the field, away from the chores that awaited.
  • The scientist labored from dawn until dark and from dark until dawn.
  • London was different from her village, with one way in and one way out.
  1. Magic Three – Three items or parallel groups of words in a series, separated by commas, that create a poetic rhythm or add support for a point, especially when the items have their own modifiers.
  • I measured, poured and mixed the ingredients.
  • When I get home, I am going to putmy feet up, eatsome cookies and reada book.
  • Instead of staying dark, day and night, every morning shutters fly open, the sun streams in golden light, and our family cat meows a welcome to the day.
  • Although I try to inhale deeply, I cannot regulate the rise and fall of my heavy chest. My palmsbecome sticky, my neck tingleswith anticipation, and my bodybegins to feel limp and cold and white like a corpse.
  1. Show Don’t Tell –Instead of telling your reader why you or a character is thinking oracting a certain way, let your reader figure it out by showing through actions and details.
  • Telling: She ran to the mailbox because she was hoping an acceptance letter from the university would arrive today. She opened the mailbox, grabbed the stack of letters and looked through the pieces until she came to the letter she had been waiting for. She started to open the letter then stopped for a moment because she was really scared it would contain bad news. She pulled out the letter, read, “Congratulations,” then she was really, really happy.
  • Showing: She looked out the window again and again, pacing and watching for the mailman. As soon as he placed the mail in the box, she threw open the door. She opened the mailbox, grabbed the stack of letters and flipped through the envelopes until she came to oneaddressed to her with. Her heart pounded when she saw the black and orange seal and the wordsPrinceton University in the upper left corner. She started to open the letter then stopped for a moment. What if it was bad news? What if she didn’t get accepted? She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and pull out the sheet of paper. She opened her eyes slowly and allowed herself to look at the first word. “Congratulations,” she read to herself then shoutedaloud as she jumped up and down.
  1. Hyphenated Modifier–Sometimes the perfect adjective just doesn’t exist, and the noun can be better described be a series of words. Think of the Hyphenated Modifier as an adjective of many words. Be sure to follow the Hyphenated Modifier with the noun it describes, and don’t use a hyphen between the last word of the modifier and the noun described
  • She’s got this blond hair, with dark highlights, parted in the middle, down past her shoulders, and straight as a preacher. She’s got big green eyes that all guys admire and all girls envy, and this I’m-so-beautiful-and-I-know-it attitude.
  • Sean takes an I-can-do-it-myself approach to every task he tries.
  • Connie has she’s-almost-as-dumb-as-the-blond-victim-in-a-horror-movie reactions.
  • Sarah’s head was down as she moved her hand across the page of her notebook in what I recognized as her I’m-pretending-to-take-notes-but-really-planning-the-complete-and-total-ruin-of-Kathy-Hollis posture.
  1. Expanded Moment - Take a moment that you would ordinarily speed past and emphasize it by slowing down and expanding the action. Develop it fully to make your reader take notice
  • But no, I had to go to school. And as I said before, I had to listen to my math teacher preach about numbers and letters and figures. I was tired of hearing her annoying voice lecture about ‘a=b divided by x.’ I glared at the small black hands on the clock, silently threatening them to go faster. But they didn’t listen, I caught myself wishing I were on white sand and looking down at almost transparent pale-blue water with Josh at my side. I don’t belong in some dumb math class. I belong on the beach, where I can soak my feet in caressing water and let the wind wander its way through my chestnut-colored hair and sip Dr. Pepper all day long.
  1. Flashback – Take the reader from the present and travel back in time to a past event
  • Sarah looked at the photograph and remembered the warm spring day when it was taken. She and her brother and sister had been playing wiffle ball in the back yard when their dog leaped in front of Sarah and snagged the ball her sister just hit. Her mom snapped a photo, which caught Sarah with a look of surprise and the airborne dog with a mouth full of wiffle ball.
  1. Full-circle Ending - Ending a piece of writing with a reference back to the attention grabber is a nice way to make your writing feel complete.
  • Beginning:

“Hey you, with the green and neon-orange striped shoelaces, you who always pulled my old frazzled white one in math. Hey you, who always added your versions of ‘art’ to my math problems for Mrs. Caton’s class so that 9 x 7 = 63 turned out to be a train with puffs of smoke and two boxcars and made me get an 83 instead of a 93 since Mrs. C. doesn’t count locomotives as correct answers.”

  • Ending:

“Now Justin still sits behind me in math with his neon-green and orange striped shoelaces and pulls on my old white frazzled ones. He still draws zombies on my homework, but he hasn’t dumped another pitcher of Kool-Aid on me - - not yet at least. Oh, and by the way, in case you’re wondering, his first words when he opened his eyes were, ‘It was James Kenton who hid your clothes and made you walk around in a chicken suit…I’m not that mean

  • Beginning:

I sit quietly on the old wooded deck, watching birds soar through the humid air. The ocean’s waves are like wrinkles gathered up in one place.

  • Ending:

The clouds are so delicate, so fragile, yet a single plane could not break their perfect form. I sit quietly on the old wooden deck, watching the birds, the waves, the clouds.

Adapted from Mary Ledbetter, with additional examples from Alchemy and Meggy Swann, by Karen Cushman