Like the brushstrokes of a painting, words can transform the blank page into a multi-dimensional world. Word Painting combines direct instruction with intriguing word exercises to teach you how to "paint" evocative descriptions that capture the images of your mind's eye and improve your writing.Drawing on more than 25 years as an award-winning author, poet and teacher, Rebecca McClanahan defines effective description as three basic concepts--eye, word and story. Beginning with eye, you'll sharpen your sensory perceptions through exercises including note taking, journaling, sketching, eye searches--even "I searches." Moving forward to word, McClanahan shows you how to describe what you experience with clarity, accuracy and, above all, imagination. You'll learn to use action-based words, effective figures of speech and lively, musical language to develop a stronger descriptive style.In the story section, you'll learn that description can be a unifying force in your fiction, nonfiction or poetry. You'll link characters to setting, drama to point of view--and you'll gain control over your work's structure and pacing.Passages from classic and contemporary masters such as Gustave Flaubert, Virginia Woolf, Truman Capote and Toni Morrison offer you inspiring examples of description, and McClanahan also includes the advice of writers and poets from Aristotle to William Stafford.Like painting, description is an art form. With its provocative insight, instruction and exercises, Word Painting will help you elevate your writing craft to new levels of richness and clarity. About the authorRebecca McClanahan has published stories, essays and poems in some of the finest literary journals in the country, including The Kenyon Review, Boulevard, The Georgia Review and The Gettysburg Review. She has published three books of poetry, most recently The Intersection of X and Y, as well as a book of lectures and readings, One Word Deep. In addition, her work has been anthologized in Pushcart Prize XVIII and The Best of American Poetry 1998. McClanahan has received the PEN/Syndicated Fiction Award, the J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize from Poetry, the Carter Prize for Nonfiction from Shenandoah, and a Governor's Award for Excellence in Education.Praise for Word Painting"Here is splendid advice for poets and prose writers alike, in vivid sentences that illustrate the book's themes. Description for McClanahan is just the trapdoor through which she ascends into the heights of all good writing, and she uses that entry to clarify point of view, characterization, memory, plot, use of the senses, even revisions toward that clarity which appeals to advocates of Strunk and White." --Doris Betts, Beasts of the Southern Wild and Other Stories and The Sharp Teeth of Love: A Novel"The advice in Word Painting is like Rebecca McClanahan's writing style: clear, concise, fresh, elegant."--Clyde Edgerton, author of Walking Across Egypt, In Memory of Junior and Where Trouble Sleeps"Too many writers have considered description as being more background for, or ornament to, their stories. McClanahan not only demonstrates its organic necessity but shows ways in which it can be made more vital, more exciting, and simply more enjoyable than I had imagined possible."--Fred Chappell, author of Farewell, I'm Bound to Leave You, More Shapes Than One and Brighten the Corner Where You AreFrom the IntroductionThe book is organized around three main concepts: eye, word and story. After establishing what we mean by description and summarizing the elements of effective description, I move directly into a discussion of the writer as the beholding eye--and, in turn, the beholding ear, mouth, nose and hand. Like painters, writers are the receptors of sensations from the real world and the world of the imagination, and effective desription demands that we sharpen our instruments of perception. So in the first few chapters, I suggest practical ways to increase our attention to the real world: note-taking, journal-writing, sketching, research, eye-search and I-search. I also discuss techniques for engaging the eye of the imagination and discovering what the inner eye sees.As I move from eye to word, I consider how to render our subjects clearly, accurately and imaginatively. Though engaging the senses is an important component of word painting, it takes us only so far; we must also describe those sensory images in a fresh way. This involves not only avoiding cliches, but also engaging the eye of the imagination through action-based description and effective figures of speech. In addition, fresh description requires attention to the musical qualities of language. The wordsections of the book deal with forming descriptions that are accurate, sensory, imaginative and musical.Finally, moving from eye and word into story, I explore how description contributes to the overall story, poem or nonfiction piece. How do we spot and evoke the revealing detail, spatially orgainze our descriptions, and weave description into the narrative arc? How do we use description to develop believable character and settings, establish point of view, modulate tension and move the plot along? How can description reveal our story's theme and suggest the prevailing tone, mood or feeling? These are the concerns that dominate the story sections of the book.
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