Halloween Description

Halloween is a great time to think about suspense and scary things. It's also a great time to think about description.

How's that? On Halloween we see and do things that are out of the ordinary, and that gives us a chance to describe things that are out of the ordinary. 

What's your costume like? What kind of candy will you bring home? What is the sky like when you step outdoors? 

Try writing an over-the-top description of something you see, hear, taste, touch, or smell on Halloween. First write an "ordinary" sentence, then write an over-the-top description. You may not use it in a story, but it's wonderful practice to see how fun description can be.

Here's my description of a black cat. 

Ordinary: The cat stood beneath the moon.

Over-the-top:  The black, scruffy flea-bitten feline with chewed-off ears, a spiky, mangy tail, dull fur in a tangled mess of knots, four paws like discarded woolly mops, and large golden eyes that glared in the moonlight like a ghostly flashlight, arched its scrawny back beneath the shimmering late-October full moon.  

Happy Halloween! 

Fun with Games

When the power goes out and there's no computer, TV, or video games, that's the time to pull out a board game. But why wait for the power to go out? And why pull out a real board game? We can use our imaginations and make up our own games, with a little borrowing from the real thing. 

Have you ever played Monopoly? How about Hogopoly, where all the pieces are pigs? You get to create the characters and name them.

Chess? How about Mess? It's like chess, with kings, queens, rooks, bishops, knights, and pawns--but you decide the rules and mess things up. 

Scrabble? How about Scramble? After a player puts his letters on the board, the next player scrambles them to create a made-up word. 

Trivial Pursuit? How about Life-and-Death Pursuit? Your answers to a series of trivia questions can mean that you live or die (in the world of the game, of course).

Try inventing your own game. Come up with a fun name, write down the rules, and create a game board and pieces with paper, cardboard, markers, or other material--or even on the computer once the power comes back on!  

More About Color

It must be those fall leaves again, but I'm obsessed with color these days. 

I just finished reading The Light Beyond the Forest, the second in the fabulous King Arthur trilogy by Rosemary Sutcliff, and she pays attention to color. 

Here's how Sutcliff brings the quest for the Holy Grail to life with fresh descriptions of gold and red and black. As I read, I wanted to join the knights on their adventures! 

new-fired gold

russet-brown

badger-streaked

crimson-striped

honey-comb golden houses

a cross as red as fresh-spilled blood on fresh-fallen snow

the proud fierce white of swan's wing or lightning flash

the blackness had a bloom on it like the bloom on a thundercloud

eyes as softly and deeply blue as nightshade flowers

the bulging black bellies of the storm clouds 

a mouth as silken red as harvest poppies

blazed red as though he were a tongue of flame

Try taking a piece of writing you're working on. Have you used colors in your descriptions? Can you make them more vivid by using an unusual color word, or by creating a simile? What does the color really look like? Not just gold, but new-fired gold or honey-comb golden houses. 

If your piece of writing doesn't include colors, try adding a flash here and there with your own inventive description. 

What about the green field in the photo above? It could be another boring landscape, or it could come to life as the blurred-green grass stretched through the haze. 

Be original with color! Have fun! 

Color

It's fall, and that means fall leaves! 

To me, the best thing about leaves in the fall is their color. (But I also love the crunchy sound they make when you kick your legs through them.) 

Red, yellow, orange, brown. Yawn.

How about a more exciting way to describe autumn leaves? When we add specific colors to our writing, our descriptions become more concrete and vivid.

A yellow leaf? Try ocher, mustard-yellow, saffron, flaxen.

Red? Wine, scarlet, crimson, blood-colored. 

Orange? Tangerine, coral, salmon, reddish-yellow.

For those of you with fall leaves outside your door, check out the incredible range of colors. Try describing a leaf in a poem: 

Falling

The crimson maple leaf

twirls toward the ground

like a glass of wine 

spilling ruby drops. 

A Hedgehog Story

Yellow Pencils is back from England! I had a great time walking through the countryside, eating mushy peas and brown sauce (not as bad as they sound), and listening to the bleating of thousands of sheep. 

I did have one disappointment, though. As I was walking on footpaths along the hedgerows, I really, really wanted to see a hedgehog. Sadly, I never did. 

I love hedgehogs. Maybe it's their shyness, or their cute snouts, or the way they look like pincushions with eyes. Whatever it is, they really capture my imagination.

So I'm dedicating this Yellow Pencils post to hedgehogs and invite you to write a story about one. What's a good hedgehog name? Harry? Bob? Gertrude? 

What does a hedgehog want more than anything in the world? To be brave? To sail across the ocean? To open a world-famous restaurant under the hedge?

Have fun writing a hedgehog story, and don't forget the mushy peas!