Summer 2015 Writing Prompt #10

We'll end our summer writing prompts with a good-bye to summer vacation. See the prompt below!

Set a story on the last day of summer vacation. 

Include a dog, a thief, a cupcake factory, and a broken window. 

Summer 2015 Writing Prompt #9

A gate, a door, an entryway, a portal….no matter what we call it, it invites us to enter another world. What awaits us on the other side? See the prompt below!

Write a story about a boy who opens this gate and meets 
someone or something that brings trouble.  

Summer 2015 Writing Prompt #8

Am I the only person who sees a dog in this painting? See the prompt below! 

Write about what YOU see in this painting. 

Summer 2015 Writing Prompt #7

It's very hot and dry here on Bainbridge Island where I live. The frog pond at the end of our road has dried up. Leaves are curled. Ferns are lying flat on the ground. 

There's a drought in the Pacific Northwest and other parts of the United States, too. 

What if we put two characters into a drought situation? See the prompt below! 

A boy and his father must walk in the desert during a drought. 

They have no water. What do they do? 

Summer 2015 Writing Prompt #6

In mystery stories, detectives have a lot of tools to help them solve crimes. But a mirror? See the writing prompt below! 

You (the detective) have been hired to solve a murder. 

You solve it using only your mirror. Write a 1st-person ("I") mystery story explaining how. 

Summer 2015 Writing Prompt #5

I love books in which characters have to survive in the wilderness. 

This week, we'll make the wild world the setting for our prompt. (See the prompt below!) 

Write about two children lost in a forest. 

Summer 2015 Writing Prompt #4

Warning! A bunny is about to invade!

I discovered the "Minnehaha Bunny," a bronze sculpture created by Jeffrey Barber, in a park in Minneapolis. Wouldn't she make a great writing prompt? 

A giant bunny invades your yard! What will you do? 

Summer 2015 Writing Prompt #3

Have you ever dreamed of living in a tower? 

If we can't really live in a tower, we can do the next best thing. For our writing prompt this week, let your imagination roam among the bricks and turrets of this magical place. 

Set a story in this tower. Don't forget to include a hero and a villain. 

A dragon would be a nice touch, too! 

Summer 2015 Writing Prompt #2

If you've ever gone to the post office in another country, you know it can be an adventure.  

Here's a mailbox in Warsaw, Poland. ("Poczta" means "mail.") 

For our writing prompt, we'll take ourselves to another land. 

Write about sending a letter in another country. You're homesick. You lost your phone. And you don't speak the language. You walk into the post office and….

Summer 2015 Writing Prompt #1

During the summer, Yellow Pencils likes to keep things simple.

Each week, I'll post a Summer Writing Prompt with a photo. Take your notebook and pencil to a comfy spot--under a tree, on your front steps, or to the beach. 

The photo and the prompt below it are to inspire. What is your story or poem? 

Write about three mice in a fountain.

Have fun! 

Summer Vacation!

School's almost out for the summer! 

Maybe, if you're lucky, you're already free to sleep in, head for the beach, and….write!

We can't all go to the ocean, but we can celebrate summer in our own way. And we can make writing part of that. 

What would you like to work on this summer? Finish that story? Write poems? Explore ideas in your journal? Or write from a prompt each week?

Starting next week, Yellow Pencils will post a writing prompt each week to keep our pencils moving. 

For today, I offer a tribute to the wonders of summer. What are yours? 

Remember to use all five senses. What are the sights, sounds, smells, feels, and tastes of YOUR summer? 

Summer Brings Its Joys

Sun slants through the porch

Books fill the hours 

Shade cools my skin 

Grass tickles my legs

Crows cackle in the trees

Strawberry ice cream lingers on my tongue

Low tide releases its smells

Sunglasses slide down my nose

Summer brings its joys. 

Making Up Words with Shakespeare

According to Jacqueline Morley in William Shakespeare: A Very Peculiar History, Shakespeare probably made up about 1,700 new words.

Here are some of them: assassination, courtship, outbreak, fashionable, and exposure.

And a few that didn't make it: insultment, unbuild, and exsufflicate (which means puffed up--whew, glad that one didn't catch on). 

If the greatest writer in the English language could make up new words, why can't we?

Get out a piece of paper--any old kind where you can make a big mess and scratch out words. 

Next, find a dictionary--a paper dictionary works best for this. 

Open the dictionary, stick out your finger, and randomly choose three words. I picked: 

fugleman: a leader

campus: the grounds of a school

louver: a slatted, ventilated opening

Now it's time to create our very own word. Choose one syllable from each word to create a brand new one, along with its meaning:

fugcamer: a camera that works especially well in bad weather 

puslouman: a person who works in a hospital

leloupus: a French pastry

You try! We may not be the next William Shakespeares (or maybe we are), but we can have fun adding our own words to the English language. 

Mancamlou! That's "Yellow Pencils" talk for good-bye! 

Remembering on Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day, a day we remember people in our lives who have died. We may also remember people we didn't know--people who gave up their lives for important causes.

Do you remember someone special? A grandparent, aunt, uncle, or a pet? 

A great way to remember those people or pets is to write about them. 

Here are ways to get started.

1. If you could do something with your special person or pet right now, what would it be? Describe it. I would ask my mom to make a batch of brownies with me.

2. If you had to describe your person or pet in 5 words, what would they be? My words for my cat Zoey would be funny, furry, curious, homebody, and chatty (yes, she loved to "chat"). After you write your 5 words, pick one and write more about it.

3. If you could say something to your person or pet, what would it be? I would tell my grandma that I wished I understood Polish while she was alive, so that I could talk to her.

As its name says, Memorial Day is a good day for remembering the people and animals we loved. Happy writing. 

Animal Poetry

I love poems about animals.

JooHee Yoon must too, because she has compiled a fun, innovative book of poems called Beastly Verse. 

Her bright illustrations in yellows, oranges, reds, and greens make the poems jump off the page. (Good thing the animals don't jump off--they only seem to.) 

Some of the poems are long. Some are short. Some are serious. Some are silly. Some rhyme. Some don't. All celebrate the wonderfulness that is the animal world.

Do you like to write verse about beasts? Try using one of these poems as a model:

The Friendly Hen by Arthur Waugh

Some birds lay eggs in towering trees,
And some in fens conceal them;
The hen seeks friendlier haunts than these,
Where every child can steal them.

Or if caterpillars are more your thing, here's a poem for you:

Caterpillar by Christina Rossetti

Brown and furry
Caterpillar in a hurry,
Take your walk
To the shady leaf, or stalk,
Or what not,
Which may be the chosen spot.
No toad spy you,
Hovering bird of prey pass by you;
Spin and die,
To live again a butterfly. 

Let your poem squawk like a hen or crawl like a caterpillar. Invent your own beast--a henpillar or caterhen. Whether your verse is beastly or ghastly or ghostly, have fun!

Strong Verbs

I was thinking about verbs today as I picked up Gary Paulsen's novel, Hatchet. 

In this award-winning novel, 13-year-old Brian has to survive in the wilderness alone after a plane crash.

Exciting plot, right?

Exciting plots deserve strong verbs. All plots deserve strong verbs. 

Here's a passage from Hatchet describing the crash. I highlighted in blue the verbs in all their forms.

Then a wild crashing sound, ripping of metal, and the plane rolled to the right and blew through the trees, out over the water and down, down to slam into the lake, skip once on water as hard as concrete, water that tore the windshield out and shattered the side windows, water that drove him back into the seat. Somebody was screaming, screaming as the plane drove down into the water. Someone screamed tight animal screams of fear and pain and he did not know that it was his sound, that he roared against the water that took him and the plane still deeper, down in the water. He saw nothing but sensed blue, cold blue-green, and he raked at the seatbelt catch, tore his nails loose on one hand. He ripped at it until it released and somehow—the water trying to kill him, to end him—somehow he pulled himself out of the shattered front window and clawed up into the blue, felt something hold him back, felt his windbreaker tear and he was free. Tearing free. Ripping free.

Did you notice the strong verbs? Crashing, ripping, slam, tore, shattered, clawed. We sometimes need weaker verbs like "was" and "felt," but in this passage the strong verbs dominate and bring the story to life.

Gary Paulsen also uses repetition--screaming, screaming--to show us Brian's emotions.

Read a scene from one of your stories. Rewrite the scene using strong verbs. Does your passage fly, lift, or soar? 

A How-To Story

We've written how-to poems on Yellow Pencils. How about a how-to story?

What's a how-to story? 

Think of doing something silly. Then imagine telling your best friend how to do it. 

• Wrestle a chimpmunk

• Pick a peck of pickled peppers

• Invite a zombie to dinner

• Live on the bottom of the ocean

• Teach an alien how to play the ukelele

• Give a salamander a bath

Got the idea? Pick one, or make up your own. 

In your writer's notebook, make a list of steps you would take to tell someone "how-to." Then connect the steps with words like "first, then, next." 

Here's my how-to story: 

How To Invite a Zombie to Dinner

First, find some really nice stationery. Zombies are fussy.

Next, write your invitation in red ink. Zombies aren't too smart. They'll think it's blood.

After that, put your invitation in a bright red envelope. Blood again.

Then, put on a stamp. One with a head is good. Zombies like heads.

Next, write on the envelope: "To the Zombie." Don't worry. Letter carriers always know where zombies live. 

Then, walk to your mailbox at night. But be careful. A hungry zombie may not be able to wait for the invitation.

Last, run home and plan your menu. Red food is good. Bon appetit! 

Water Poems

I live on an island, surrounded by water.

So it's not surprising that I want to devote our last week of National Poetry Month to water poetry.


Water is life-giving. It's also beautiful, and wet, and wild and wonderful, which is why so many poets use water images. 

Water also turns into ice, like in "Woman Skating" by Margaret Atwood:

With arms wide the skater

turns, leaving her breath like a diver's

trail of bubbles.

Seeing the ice 

as what is is, water. 

Here's "Water Music" by Robert Creeley, with its dark mood:

The words are a beautiful music.

The words bounce like in water.

Water music,

loud in the clearing

off the boats,

birds, leaves.

They look for a place

to sit and eat-

no meaning,

no point. 

And here's the start of the fun, silly "Duck's Ditty" by Kenneth Grahame: 

All along the backwater,

Through the rushes tall,

Ducks are a-dabbling,

Up tails all! 

What is YOUR water poem? Is it about the ocean? A lake? A stream? An icy pond? Or a duck? 

Find your own images and let yourself get wet with water words!

Onomatopoeia for Earth Day

It's perfect that Earth Day falls in April, which is National Poetry Month.

This Earth Day, I want to combine two things I love: animals and onomatopoeia. 

In case you haven't heard of this wonderful word, onomatopoeia (pronounced ah-no-mah-to-PEE-ah) refers to a word that's formed from the sound it makes.

sizzle, crunch, cuckoo, tick-tock, fizz

Can you think of more? 



Animal sounds have great onomatopoeia:

oink, meow, chirp, hiss, ribbit, croak, squeak, quack

To celebrate Earth Day, let's write a poem using animal onomatopoeia. Here's mine:

Croaking and Squawking

The crow croaks at the mouse

Who squeaks at the sheep

Who bleats at the cat

Who mews at the dog

Who yowls at the pig

Who oinks at the raven

Who caws at the parrot

Who squawks at me that it's time to eat. 

Try making your own poetry animals "talk" with onomatopoeia.

Recite your poem out loud on Earth Day, or read it to your pets. For extra zing, add your own sound effects!

Rhymed Couplets

It's the second week of National Poetry Month. Hurray for poetry!

And hurray for William Shakespeare! I'm reading Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, a story about fairies, love, and confusion in the forest.

One of the joys of reading Shakespeare is his language. Sometimes he uses blank verse (poetry that doesn't rhyme). Sometimes he uses prose (not poetry). And sometimes he uses rhymed couplets, which are wonderful to read aloud.

One story in A Midsummer Night's Dream is about Oberon, the King of the Fairies, and Titania, his Queen. 

In these rhymed couplets, Oberon tells Puck to place some magical "juice" from a flower on the sleeping Titania's eyes. When Titania wakes up, she will fall in love with the first being she sees.

In rhymed couplets, Oberon begins: 

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,

Quite overcanopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet muskroses and with eglantine.

There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,

Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight.

And there the snake throws her enameled skin,

Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in. 

Read it out loud. Can you hear and feel the rhyme? The rhyme scheme is what we call:

a
a
b
b
c
c
d
d

We say "couplets" because the first two lines rhyme, the next two lines rhyme, and so on.

Blows means to burst into flower. Oxlips, woodbine, and eglantine are types of flowers. Weed means clothing. But even if we don't know the meaning of these words, it doesn't matter. The rhyme and the sense of the poem carry us away.

Want to try your own? Write a short poem in rhyming couplets. It doesn't have to be about fairies and magical juice. It can be about anything you want. 

Rhyming is fun. If you get stuck trying to find a rhyme, go to one of the rhyming dictionaries online.

Now excuse me while I start my poem in rhyming couplets:

a      I love my stapler, so sleek and gray,
a      I always hate to put it away. 
b      It chomps, it bites, it holds together
b      Anything, in any weather. 

It's not Shakespeare, but as I said, rhyming couplets can be about whatever we want! 

National Poetry Month 2015

April is National Poetry Month! 

On Yellow Pencils, that means all poetry, all month.

Not a poet, you say? Not a problem. Even if we write fiction or nonfiction, writing a poem lets us play with words. And we all love words, right?

Let's start with nonsense. Being silly is always a good way to get into poetry. I'm in the mood to write an acrostic poem using the word "nonsense." How about you? 

Natty was batty
Oony was loony
Nilly was silly
Sadie was a-fraidy
Elso was nutso
Nad was mad
Soupy was loopy and
Elaine was insane. 

Your nonsense acrostic can rhyme or not. The only "rule" is, Have fun. Welcome to National Poetry Month!