Similes

Similes are a most elegant form of iambic writing, but I find the necessity of the words like and as to be primitive. It conveys a bulky structure containing the poetic flow. Having something hinder the mellifluous quality of your comparison is not what I consider to be a successful writing experience. 

The secret that they don't tell you when you learn similes in middle school is that they aren't reliant on like and as. It takes a little creativity, a little ingenuity, a little extra brainstorming, and maybe a gander to the border of personification, but successful similes can exist without those two constricting words.

The words were gouged into wood with all the rough brutality of a tigers claws.

Her eyes were twin pools of liquid silver, but tender and vulnerable in ways that water was too insubstantial to convey. 

The hollow blue light of the computer monitor contorted her face into the grimace of a ghastly wraith. 

Each of these can easily be tweaked back into the standard simile. 

The words were gouged into the wood as if a rough, brutal tiger had clawed them in. 

Her eyes were like twin pools of liquid silver, but tender and vulnerable as water was too insubstantial to convey. 

The hollow blue light of the computer monitor contorted her face into a grimace like a ghastly wraith. 

It's all about playing with the sentence so that it makes sense to omit those two generic words. Can it still be a simile without as or like? The comparison is definitely less pronounced, and without that obvious trademark, will anyone really notice the nature of your poetry? 

Of course, it is up to the writer whether they chafe at the confines of as and like. Some might enjoy the definition of such terms, and some might be daunted to deride their necessity. But for me, and others like me, a simile is more flexible, and this post is me pulling at the elasticity. 

Anger

I'm angry today, or at least I was, and before this anger faded into sorrow, surreality, and then reluctant acceptance, I couldn't quite pinpoint it. It was just . . . there, muddling my vision and blurring the past when I look upon it. Anger is a very interesting emotion, as are they all, as are the effects that emotions have upon your body. I think I already posted about that . . . but I was strolling through a ludicrously cheap and disproportionately large book, and I found a few things I had highlighted that gave me a new perspective on my previous anger. Ah, perspective. That deserves its own post, too. . . .

'It's my rule never to lose my temper until it would be detrimental to keep it.' - Sean O'Casey

'Never forget what a man says to you when he is angry.' - Henry Ward Beecher

'Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,

Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.' - William Congreve

Firsts

You never really do forget The First, do you? The First of anything. Be it The First in a flexible sense, as in the earliest of whatever than you can recall, or be it the actual original, however far back that was. 

I'm not talking about anything in particular. There are many firsts. There's a first for just about everything you've ever done, even breathing and blinking and eating, although that spans back to about the day you were born. But there are certain defining moments in your life of which, though they may occur multiple times, you will never let go of the first. It will always be with you, an echo of times now long past, and a memory of when you were younger; more naive; fresher to this world; and had so much yet to experience. 

• Your first BFF, although the melancholy truth is, it's not always forever. 
• Your first love, which always manages to crash and burn in a painful and possibly humiliating way
• Your first kiss
• Your first failed school assignment, which has always convinced me that the apocalypse is nigh
• Your first visit to the hospital after a wound
• Your first death in the family
• Your first fight
• Your first really big, epic, phenomenal screw-up . . . in my experience, it's not the last

There are others, probably involving matrimony and parenthood and college, but I have yet to experience those sensations. Perhaps, far into the future, I'll rustle up this blog and jot down a few lines about those joys. But those are some of the more universal firsts, aside from ones that I cower to post on the internet even under a pseudonym. Based on vocation, interest, and inclination, there are a few others that I've undergone:

• The first book you ever finish writing, which can occasionally be looked back upon with mortification and revulsion, but maybe that's just me
• The first tremendous failure in baking (They weren't chocolate chip cookies, they were lace cookies. Forget to add flour?! Nonsense!)
• Your first role model
• The first time you really, truly, maybe irrevocably disappoint someone
• Your first taste of the unattainable, in whatever field it might be
• The first subject you excel in

What are some of your big firsts? Leave me a comment! I'd love to hear that I'm not the only person who undergoes nostalgia and mentions it on the internet.

Essays

I have, in my time, been enlisted in the production of several essays; far more than I care to remember. This is an affliction that most every student can sympathize with. But not everyone in that demographic concocts their own secret recipe of success, tried and true for every paper they've set their pen to. (Y'know, or keyboard they've flitted their fingers across.)

My favorite example is the persuasive essay. Most teachers will present you with the standard five-paragraph format:

1. Introduction - where you give a broad view of your general statement; this is good, this is bad, this is better, blah blah blah

2. First of three supporting arguments to your topic

3. Second of three supporting arguments

4. Third and final of three supporting arguments

5. Conclusion - where you offer a final, passing summary of why whatever you said originally is true

Each paragraph has a minimum of three or four sentences - usually they don't go into how many words comprise a sentence and how many letters are expected to make up those words. But they offer you a strict enough paradigm that perfectly adhering to that, coming up with a solid point of view and at least three different, staunch arguments to back it up can score you a passing grade. 

What if your arguments aren't that great? What if a passing grade isn't good enough? What if you just want to go above and beyond, being a nerd similar to myself? 

Well then, you need some embellishments. Some fancy words and elegant phrasing to disguise the fact that you have little substance to your argument. This won't work for, say, a trial, and maybe not an exam past middle school. But it generally can't hurt unless your teacher is a serious fan of Hemingway. 

Monosyllabic words, while there are some splendid ones, won't always beef up the bare bones unless you twist them up into prose. Phrases like flecks of rain or wisps of smoke are iambic and all, but sometimes you can't be bothered with cogitating poetry, especially if your writing has a time limit. So the simple answer, the most meager of enhancements is - drum roll - vocabulary. 

Not ridiculous vocabulary, like the utterly useless words I've been (fairly) accused of spouting. Things like comiconomenclaturist and tatterdemalion will, while probably forcing your teacher to resort to the dictionary, occasionally so successfully baffle them that they might question the nature of your facts and even mark down your grade. You need to be judicious. Allot just the proper amount of sophistication to  augment your work without overpowering it. 

While I could offer a list of such words, the best resource, without forcing me to resort to a very long and very boring post of my improving words, is a thesaurus. Take the simple word you were planning to insert and fish around for a more intelligent synonym. It'll work wonders on your paper, I semi-guarantee. (Just because I can't be traced doesn't mean I'll risk my reputation with an indubitable statement.)

And with that offering, measly though it may be, I bid you goodnight. (For me, that is, because you could be reading this whenever. Do not take my closing as an excuse to turn in early or take a nap when you have obligations to attend to. In fact, let's revise it.) I bid you good whenever.

Tenses and Narrators

Writing characters is difficult, to say the least. 

In most writing, there are several stereotypes divided by the tenses of writing, the gender, the time period, and overall the mood/tone of the writer. But a few I have found to stand out:

FIRST PERSON

First person is a closeup of character development. Emotions of this person are easier to comprehend and we get a better scope of who they are; who they become; how they change; who they are close with. But their scope is parochial, and we often miss some of the other character's actions unless the first person narration is rotated, which can be confusing.

Female - several of the first person female narrators I have read from the perspectives of are, well, wimpy. They join up with groups of heavy hitters and experienced fighters who, by comparison, make them appear even weaker than they already are. They develop into formidable warriors most of the time, but before that they're an insufferable burden. All they do is scream 'look out!' as arrows and missiles and blows come hurtling down around their defenders and they do nothing to stop it. And sometimes they become fighters much too quickly; though it's nicer to have them pulling their own weight, it's also totally unbelievable. 

Male - um . . . I'm actually not super prepared for this; I haven't really read a lot of male first person narration . . . Well, this is awkward.

THIRD PERSON ALL-KNOWING

Pros: Third person has a very wide scope, as it can encompass any character the author wants with little effort. It usually focuses on one character to explain the point of view of, so as not to allow the reader to much sight into all the character's reactions and preserve some mystery.

Cons: I prefer writing and reading first person, as it comforts me to know just who I'm dealing with and makes them easier to understand; third person feels somewhat impersonal and remote. It provides a less intimate analyzation of the characters, which can be frustrating and feel detached.

Male or female gender isn't as important in third person all-knowing, as it can swap the perspective of male and female characters very swiftly. The point of third person is that you can provide cryptic information just for the sake of the reader that none of the characters could possibly know; in first person, if the narrator doesn't know it, you don't know it.

PRESENT TENSE

Present tense has a feel of perpetual action to it and helps you keep inside the book's universe, captivated by how realistically and dramatically everything is happening. Present tense usually accompanies first person narration; it's kinda weird if you try it with third-person. I tend to find it in distopia-type books: The Hunger Games, Divergent, Insurgent, Matched and Crossed, I think, are some examples.

Present tense keeps things exciting, but it also makes the character narrating it feel less important. Focusing on who is doing what becomes less important the more I get drawn into their surroundings and the occurrences around them.

PAST TENSE

Most books are written in past tense. It's more familiar; it deprives us of the immediate action of present tense, but the slower pace allows more time to smell the roses. There can be poetic, romantic, or get-to-know-the-character interludes in past tense. Most of what I write and read is past tense. Writing a book in both is something I find challenging; switching back and forth tends to confuse me after a while.

I originally intended this to be about characters but that is a whole other . . . whatever. I'm blanking on the adage; it's late, I'm tired, and I was not super prepared for this post. Let's just say that characters require a post purely of their own, without any interference of tenses or narrators. I was planning on doing adjectives next, but I'll get right on it.

Guardian Angel

Do we each have our own guardian angel?

I have fallen asleep in the pasture again

The flowers entrance me

I cannot escape my own curiosity

My mind whirls but my body betrays me, succumbing to rest

I have fallen asleep in the pasture again

Night has fallen and the sky is bloated gray with clouds

I have no defense against the storm

Nor any who wish me ill-will

I have fallen asleep in the pasture again

But I wake up in my bed at home

The memory of billowing blue robes, a woman's arms around me, gleaming seraphic wings

There is a vase of those beguiling flowers placed at my bedside

The Sapphire Dictionary

I once, maybe twice I read a book called The Emerald Atlas. I found it an intriguing concept; taking our guidance manuals such as thesauruses, encyclopedias, almanacs, atlases, and dictionaries, then imbuing them with additional mystical potency. The inclusion of gems both in title and description helped embellish the idea. Though I know that the author will be producing two more books in the series and presumably two more magical volumes within those books, I considered cogitating my own version of the idea. 

The tome is thick, but it's size is well-proportioned to the weighty heft. The covers are sheathed in dark azure leather. There are no indications of what the content might pertain to. 

She thumbs it open swiftly, her fingers skidding on the cobalt silk lining. The pages are empty, clean slates of piercing white that seem to glow with reflected light. 

Her hand trails onto the first sheaf of paper and all conscious thought flits onto the page, leeched from her fingers. She gasps, her hand jolting back from the folio and fluttering to her temples. Her mind is whirling, conjuring random flights of fancy to fill these new gaps. 

Meanwhile, words and sensations are swirling on the paper. She watches as they dwindle, the irrelevant wanderings dissolving when they are deemed lowly. Larger thoughts loom alone now, condensing and translating into a single, interpretable question. The filter is done. 

Fear plugs the remaining absences in her mind as she bows over the page, wondering what question lies foremost in her subconscious and soul, wondering whether this book will define it, will define her.