Be an Artist in Your Writing

by Jan May

Being a creative writing teacher for elementary children, I love to inspire my young writers to venture forth and try new things. Writers are really artists that paint on the canvas of our minds with words and images that feel so real, we could reach out and touch them.  We feel the splashing waves in Moby Dick, we smell the roasted goose in A Christmas Carol, and we hear the fierceness of Aslan’s roar.  A good book can transport us to another world without us ever having to leave our room.

To add a splash of color in your writing, try a literary technique called personification (per-son-i-fi-ca-tion).  It’s giving person-like qualities to non-living things. Using personification in your writing is like changing the color on your printer from black and white to color.

Ask yourself, what would love look like if it were human? What kind of human parts, either physical or emotional, could it have?  I think of happy things like hugs or kisses. So that would be arms, hands, or  lips.  I could write: Love reached out its hands and held me tight. What about love doing something with you?  Love beckoned me to dance or Love became my best friend. Love can’t really do those things, can it? But what a great image it paints on our mind!

What could anger do?  Maybe it could drag you out and slam you against the wall like a bully. Maybe anger held you prisoner until his fury subsided.

I find a good way of creating personification in my stories can come through brainstorming. Just write down the first things that come to your mind and build on them. One idea leads to the other. There are no wrong answers, so just write freely; your best ideas may come this way!  Jealousy began to squeeze my brain gives much more of a dramatic image than she was jealous.

Nature and weather are also great to personify.  The sea spit me out and dragged me under with its angry waves. Waves really don’t have anger, do they? But by giving them person-like emotions, it adds more depth and life to your writing. You try it! Make a list of three weather conditions and three emotions and see if you can give them a person-like quality. Using personification can be lots of fun and can help you develop your writing.  Pretty soon you will be painting on the canvas of our minds and having us reach out to touch it.

Our Author

Jan May is a creative writing teacher for elementary age children, pastor’s wife, and author of the New Millennium Girl Series chapter book, Isabel’s Secret. Her books include, Creative Writing Made Easy, Introducing Isabel, and the wonderfully fun paper doll and craft book, Isabel’s Closet. She has a passion for igniting the creativity in children and believes that given the right encouragement, any child can write. She is a graduate of the Institute of Children’s Literature and has a college background in Biblical Studies and Christian Education from North Central University, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Many of the fun projects found in her chapter books were created while  homeschooling her own two children. Her love of nature and industry, like building a frog habitat, reptile zoo, or making or a butterfly box, is listed in the addendum of each book.

She hosts a homeschool resource website with fun crafts, projects, and recipes for kids. Check it out to find the latest writing contests for kids.

Join her this summer in downloading the free creative writing lesson plans for the six week historical fiction class- The Spies of the Revolutionary War.

Join the Sons of Liberty as they spy and fight for the freedom for the greatest nation on earth.  Explore secret codes, disguises, and invisible ink as you learn to write an adventure story about the American Revolution.

www.NewMillenniumGirlBooks.com