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Her writing was as powerful as…Using literary devices to improve journalistic writing
It smelled like…
The air smells like stale hamburgers and unbrushed teeth. It smells like cold coffee, like sour beer. It smells like exhaustion.
The air smells as if it has been inhaled and exhaled by too many people for far too long, and they are breathing it still, snoring and snuffling, sighing and murmuring as they sprawl about O’Hare International Airport, like refugees from some invisible war.
Tools of the trade
Anecdote Dialogue Repetition Partial sentences Personification Allusion Simile Metaphor Mild alliteration
AnecdoteA small story that represents the big truth.It doesn’t tell. It shows.
This story tells…In Houston and other urban school
districts across the nation, the safety of teachers and principals is a growing concern.
In the 2003 fall semester alone, there were 47 assaults against Houston Independent School District staff members, district security reports show. In each of the two previous school years, the total for both semesters was about 60 assaults.
This story shows…James Miller was calling roll in his first-period
history class last month when one of his 14-year old students started shouting, throwing paper and walking around the room.
The Stockard Middle School teacher’s cue to send him to the office came when the boy pulled a marijuana cigarette out of his pocket.
But before Miller could fill out the principal’s referral form, witnesses said, the youth punched him repeatedly in the face, slammed him against a chalkboard and knocked him out.
A classroom full of stunned eighth-graders looked on as the boy kicked the unconscious teacher in the chest and fled. Miller was left with a broken nose, loose teeth, eye damage and bruises. He has been on medical leave since the attack Jan. 7 at the southside school.
In Houston and other urban school districts across the nation, the safety of teachers and principals is a growing concern.
In the 2003 fall semester alone, there were 47 assaults against Houston Independent School District staff members, district security reports show. In each of the two previous school years, the total for both semesters was about 60 assaults.
— Anna Macias, Dallas Morning News
AnecdoteIt took only a second. Sophomore Rachel Zeigler turned
her back on Josh Nelson long enough for the mischievous 8-year-old to open the backyard gates, allowing the three black Labradors to escape into the neighborhood.
“I totally freaked,” Rachel said. “The last thing Mr. Nelson told me was to make certain the dogs didn't get out of the yard, and just like that, they were gone. I called my boyfriend, and we chased them down for an hour.”
Welcome to the wonderful world of baby-sitting, where anything goes, where dogs run free, 4-year-olds put kittens in dryers and teenage girls learn about as much as they need to know about how to be a mom.
DialogueCarrying only a clipboard and a malfunctioning pen, Judy
Coyle raps briskly on the apartment door. A moment later, a 16-year-old girl opens it.
“How come you’re not in school?” Coyle asks.“’Cause I don’t feel good,” she replies.“I’ve sent you a warning,” Coyle says. “I’m fixing to go
one step further. I can take your mother to court or you can be in school. Now, y’all don’t have money for that. I’d hate to bring the police after you — but I will. Now I expect to see you in school tomorrow.”
Judy Coyle is on the job. Her silver shield, which she flashes police-style as she makes her rounds, identifies her as an attendance officer for the Irving Independent School District. But the children she tracks down know her as the truant officer.
Internal dialogueThough it made her dizzy and sick to her stomach,
junior Lisa Strolberg began smoking when she was 13 because, she explained, they made her feel accepted by the older girls she hung out with. They all smoked, so she did too.
She chased away her fears of disease and addiction by convincing herself, “I’m just doing this for now. I won’t get hooked. I can quit any time I like.”
Five years later, she’s still puffing away.“I’d like to quit,” she said. “I’m just not sure I can.”
RepetitionThey had never flown in a plane. Never
worn eye black. Never seen so many football fans.
The run to the state semifinals by the 1952 North Dallas football team — the Cinderella Bulldogs — was all about milestones. It was the school’s first playoff appearance in 16 years. And today, 50 years later, it is still the school’s most recent postseason trip.
Repetition Soak up a year in America. Learn some
English. Make some friends. Then return to Russia and deal with the rest of his life.
That was the plan anyway.But that was before his mother died. Before
he decided there was nothing left in St. Petersburg. Before he became a small-town basketball star at Toledo High School, along the Cowlitz River.
“How did I get here?” Artem Wallace asks rhetorically. “Oh man, where do I start?”
— Michael Ko, “Hoops journey spans half the world,” The Seattle Times
RepetitionAt this point of the season, Dallas Cowboys
coach Bill Parcells doesn’t care much about aesthetics. Neither do his players.
So they didn’t talk much about Vinny Testaverde’s three interceptions. Or Detroit’s 50-yard touchdown pass in the fourth quarter that turned an easy win into a hard-fought victory. Or any of the other mistakes that will surely show up in today’s videotape session.
All they cared about was winning a football game for the first time in 34 days.
RepetitionA man fell through the ice and nobody missed him.
Nobody reported him gone. Nobody wondered where he was. Not the day he fell through the ice or the next day or the day after that. For an entire week, nobody missed him.
People out walking their dogs had seen him fall through the ice in Prospect Park Lake in Brooklyn on the frosty morning of Jan. 18. Police scuba divers did all they could to find the man, clawing through the bone-chilling waters, looking everywhere. But as the days lapsed without progress, it began to seem as if there was no man who fell through the ice.
Even in this city of the famous and the forgotten that passes so many by, could someone be that invisible?
Then, last Saturday, one of the scuba divers found the man who fell through the ice. He had a name: Miguel Flores, he had an age, 23, and he had one of those dark stories of someone who discovered himself in New York by chance and hoped for promise and met doom.
— N. R. Kleinfeld, The New York Times
Partial sentenceAfter Jean Wheeler gave birth at age 17, she didn’t
know what to do when her son cried. Or how to change his diaper. Or when to switch from milk to cereal.
She learned quickly, though, through the school’s Pregnancy Education and Parenting Program.
Without the program, “I wouldn’t have graduated,” Wheeler said. Now 19, she works two jobs, including part-time work at the school-district day-care center.
Partial sentence Rhian Nevergold never thought her dad, a
telecommunications engineer with two advanced degrees, would be out of work. Ever.
Her father, Richard, worked for a company that put him in charge of a large NATO communications project in Brussels, Belgium. He earned more than $100,000 a year and sent Rhian to an expensive private school. Life for the Nevergolds was good.
“He is so smart, and he worked so hard,” Rhian said.Then everything changed. Her dad’s company
downsized and cut his job. He has been out of work ever since.
Partial sentence/repetitionShannon Hefferman, a junior at Center High
School, has witnessed it. The taunting, the teasing, the bullying. Students teased about their clothes. Teased over how they speak, what they say. Teased for being “stupid,” teased for being who they are.
“I think it’s horrible,” says Shannon, 17. “There are people in our school who don’t even have friends. I’ve seen people get teased for horrible reasons.”
PersonificationTrees must love Gordon Bell.The Microsoft researcher set out years
ago to live a paperless existence, and he’s just about there.
PersonificationSomething’s always a little wrong in a Kmart,
which is as good a reason as any to love it. The beleaguered, bankrupt chain of 2,114 stores has routinely defied the attempts of those who would dress it up (Martha Stewart) or make it cooler (Jaclyn Smith). It always has a way of being a slightly frazzled place, whether you’re in the Kmart at Carlisle Boulevard and Indian School Road in the middle of Albuquerque or in the Kmart at the corner of West Thirty-Fourth Avenue in the middle of Manhattan.
PersonificationThe best Kmart is a Kmart on the edge of nowhere.
(And most of them, psychically if not actually, are.)Unlike its competitors, a true Kmart is unashamed to
be a Kmart. It has lipstick on its teeth and those days where it feels, you know, not so fresh? It smells of popcorn, new bicycle tires, a package of crew socks, and home perm kits. You should be hesitant to go in there, and then you go in anyhow, because sometimes you feel like being a Kmart person. (Sometimes you feel like being a Wal-Mart person, even though you fancy yourself a Target person. But we’ll come back to that.)
PersonificationShe was born in an old Coke can.Her father was a listless Lothario with bushy antennae
and not much personality. Mostly, he chased females and sucked nectar. Her mother was more ambitious — a leggy femme with an appetite for adventure and blood. Come evening, she’d go cruising for capillaries.
This Coke can had been discarded soda-less in a vacant lot. One spring day, Madre Mosquito — sated with blood and loaded with eggs — descended through the push-tab hole like a spelunker and splurted out eight ova.
Our heroine was among them.
AllusionIt’s summer time and the painting’s not easy.Storms are jumpin’ and the humidity’s high.But nothing could dampen the spirits of 400
teenagers and 25 adult leaders who converged Monday for a week of repairing and rolling new paint onto 45 houses on Lansing’s east side.
AllusionJ.P. Losman marches to the beat of a different
drummer, which is to say himself.When the Buffalo Bills quarterback gets home
each day, he closes himself in a room and pounds on his drums for 10 or so minutes while Incubus, his favorite band, blares on the sound system. Losman said it’s a fast, easy way to vent frustration—therapy by percussion.
“I’m not an NFL player trying to be a rock ‘n roller,” he says. “I just like to bang and see how much noise I can make.”
AllusionOf all the gym joints in the world, Marty Blake is
liable to walk into yours if there’s even a whisper of a rumor that a pro prospect might be playing there. It’s his business to spin out, in eyes-only briefing books circulated among the 30 NBA teams, the prospective story of every credible, draft-eligible ballplayer on the planet.
But not dumb allusion…To be or not to be. A drug addict, that is. Many
students will experiment with drugs, and they will surely become hooked.
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men (and women!) should join the Chess Club!
Goodbye, ScottyShortly after he was diagnosed with
Alzheimer’s disease, Star Trek’s James “Scotty” Doohan made one final appearance to say goodbye to his legion of Trekkies.
“Nichelle, it’s the most wonderful day of my life,” he told former castmate Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) when he received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Aug. 30.
Now, it’s his fans’ turn to say farewell. The beloved actor, best known as chief engineer Montgomery Scott of the Starship Enterprise on the original Star Trek TV series and subsequent films, died Wednesday at his home in Redmond, Wash. He was 85.
Beam me up…This time, it was Scotty’s turn to get beamed
up.James “Scotty” Doohan of the original TV series
Star Trek embarked on his exploration of death, the final frontier, Wednesday at his home in Redmond, Wash. He was 85. Now, he’s up there in that big starship in the sky.
SimileIn 25 years I’ve been to at least 1,000 press
conferences. World Series, Super Bowls, prizefights — huge rooms full of tough guys. But the most gripping press conference, the most unforgettable one, was last Thursday in a little room in Grand Junction, Colorado, starring a guy as skinny as a two-iron.
That was when 27-year-old adventurer Aron Ralston described for the world how he had saved his life by cutting off his lower arm with a dull pocketknife.
SimileJohnny Cash was a rarer breed, an earthy yet
dazzling poet-artist, a 6-foot-2 man with crevices like hatchet marks through his cheeks who sold more than 50 million records.
SimileJust over three weeks ago, under pressure
from Bosnian authorities, she was one of 30 children five years or older who reversed that journey, returning to a land so ruined that, in some parts of this town, shell-struck homes stand like rows of black teeth in bad gums.
Simile (from literature)Everybody in our family has different hair. My
Papa’s hair is like a broom, all up in the air. And me, my hair is lazy. It never obeys barrettes or bands. Carlos’ hair is thick and straight. He doesn’t need to comb it. Nenny’s hair is slippery—slides out of your hand. And Kiki, who is the youngest, has hair like fur.
…hair that smells like breadBut my mother’s hair, my mother’s hair, like little
rosettes, like little candy circles all curly and pretty because she pinned it in pincurls all day, sweet to put your nose into when she is holding you, holding you and you feel safe, is the warm smell of bread before you bake it, is the smell when she makes room for you on her side of the bed still warm with her skin, and you sleep near her, the rain outside falling and Papa snoring. The snoring, the rain, and Mama’s hair that smells like bread.
Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street
But again, not stupid simileHe was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.
Can it get worse?The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
Ashley Simpson badHer shoulders heaved like the tiny sobs of Snuggles the cat being run through with a roasting spit.
The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
Introducing … bad metaphor He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
Metaphor (good) Jonathan Lebed was something of a legend at his high school in the leafy suburb of Cedar Grove, N.J., even before last week, when he became the first minor ever to be charged with stock fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The 15-year-old possessed that most coveted band of 21st century schoolyard cachet: he knew how to make big money on the Internet. For all intents and purposes, he is a spiky-haired shark in parachute pants, a modern day John Dillinger with a laptop computer and enough passwords to get him into all the right chat rooms and bulletin boards where his scams ranked in almost $300,000.
Metaphor (good)Ponce de Leon Avenue is a fat boy’s dream. In one two-block stretch, just north of downtown
Atlanta, the drive-through fast-food restaurants are door-to-door, and the hungry but very busy people are bumper-to-bumper. A motorist can purchase three different brands of fried chicken, grab a handful of soft tacos, throw a pizza in the back seat, sample four different nationally advertised cheeseburgers and slurp down a butter-pecan milk shake and never get his car out of first gear.
Metaphor (good)Inspiration is a rare and flighty bird. Most of us
never catch a glimpse of it. Very occasionally it settles down helpfully in the corner, cawing advice to artists as they pile up those bodies of work on which their hopes of immortality rest.
More usually — and this was the case with Arthur Miller — it touches down briefly, then darts away. The artist may catch tantalizing sight of the creature as he walks on through the woods, but it never again perches long on his shoulder.
Metaphor (bad )The cafeteria was veritable ocean of humanity,
and the senior sharks sliced their way through the great barrier reef, tearing into the freshmen as if they were baby seals.
AlliterationNobody beats Brady and Belicheck in a big
game, not even Big Ben.Tom Brady and Bill Belicheck were an
unstoppable combination again for the New England Patriots, exposing all of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ weaknesses to end their 15-game winning streak and win the AFC championship, 41-27, on Sunday night.
Alliteration They had been reliable caretakers of a cosmic
curse, feasting for decades on the gift that kept on giving: Babe Ruth, purchased from the Boston Red Sox in 1920, and all the championship karma he brought with him.
The rules were very simple. The Yankees won, and their rivals lost, often painfully, eternal justice for the worst trade in baseball history. The Red Sox still have not won a World Series in 86 years. But they got there last night, playing the Babe’s game in the house that he built.
With a barrage of four home runs — all pulled into the right field seat seats, where Ruth once took aim — the Red Sox eliminated the Yankees with a 10-3 victory in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series at Yankee Stadium.
The Red Sox became the first team in baseball history to win a best-of-seven series after losing the first three games…
Lowe used 10 pitches, getting harmless groundouts from Jeter and Rodriguez and a strikeout from Gary Sheffield. Lowe spun around and posed on the mound, pumping his fist and holding it in front of him - once, then twice.
It was actually happening. The nerd was kissing the homecoming queen. Paper was beating scissors. Scissors were beating rock. Charlie Brown was kicking the football. The Red Sox were beating the Yankees for the American League pennant.
— by TYLER KEPNER, The New York Times
Compared to…After losing the first three games of the ALCS,
the Boston Red Sox completed a miraculous comeback, beating the New York Yankees, 10-3, Wednesday.
Boston center fielder Johnny Damon busted out of his slump, hitting two home runs on his 3-for-6 outing with 6 RBIs.
Perfidious Pitfalls Of Alliterative Predilections
Using words you don’t know and no one else does either.
Nattering nabobs of negativism.
A titanic toady of timorous torpidity.
Sacrificing accuracy for cuteness or cleverness.
The ragged rascal raced around the rugged rock.
Student spirit sparkles as the spring semester starts.
The flickering flame of freedom burns brightly for the boys who faced the ferocious fight.
Drawing attention to the alliteration itself.
What the source said: Edwards said he hated campaigning.
What the reporter wrote:Edwards perceived the campaign as nothing less than a pilgrimage to the pillars of Purgatory.
Pulling it all together
…men on the verge of drowningAll the way down the bank of radar scopes, the air
traffic controllers have the savage, bug-eyed look, like men on the verge of drowning, as they watch the computer blips proliferate and speak in frantic bursts of techno-chatter to the pilots: “Continental 1528, turn right heading 280 immediately! Traffic at your 12 o’clock!”
Tom Zaccheo, a tightly wound control-room veteran, sinks his teeth into his cuticles and turns, glowering, to the controller by his side. “Hey, watch your damned planes. You’re in my airspace.”
like a pneumatic drill…Two scopes away, the normally unflappable Jim
Hunter, his right leg pumping like a pneumatic drill, sucks down coffee and squints as blips representing 747’s with several hundred passengers on board simply vanish from his radar screen.
“If the FAA doesn’t fix this damned equipment,” he fumes, retrieving the blips with his key pad, “It’s only a matter of time before there’s a catastrophe.”
‘Look out the cockpit window’…And Joe Jorge, a new trainee, pants down at the end
as he orders pilots to turn, climb, descend, speed up, slow down and look out the cockpit window, captain!
From the passenger seat of a moving airplane, the sky over New York City seems empty, serene, a limitless ocean of blue. But on a controller’s radar scope, it looks more like a 6-lane highway at rush hour with everyone pushing 80. On the Sunday after Thanksgiving — usually the busiest air-travel day of the year — jets are barreling toward Newark just 1,000 feet above the propeller planes landing at Teterboro. Newark departures streak up the west side of the Hudson River just as La Guardia arrivals race down the east.
Curse and twitch like…And in the darkened operations room of the
New York Terminal Radar Approach Control — the vast air traffic facility in Westbury, L.I. that handles the airspace over New York City — the controllers curse and twitch like a gathering of Tourette sufferers, as they try to keep themselves from going down the pipes.
Using literary devices
Have a purpose other than showing off. Use them sparingly. Write with your ear. Listen for tone and pace. Develop an honest voice. Read. Read. Read. Practice. Practice. Practice. Open your eyes!
Alive and kicking!
On Monday morning of the last week of July, Lory Morgan and two other hopefuls were sitting around a table in the Kilgore College cafeteria, eating bowls of Coco-Puffs and reciting rules they had been given the night before. They were required to wear their hair in ponytails on the top of their heads. They were not allowed to wear makeup except for red lipstick. They were required to pin a gigantic nametag on their solid-colored leotards. They could not wear jewelry, needless to say. Unless given permission to speak, they had to answer all questions from their assigned advisers and other sophomore Rangerettes with only “Yes, ma-am. Thank you, Miss Jones (or whatever).”
Still kickin’…
The girls eyed one another across the table, cracking up at their goofy-looking hair foundations and bright-red lip gloss. There were reasons for these rules. “Many girls need to come to a more humble place,” director Dana Blair told me. “They have always been the officer and won everything and been the ‘it’ girl, and if we had all those egos running around, practice would be difficult.”
Still kickin’…
So far, the tryouts were similar in many ways to last year’s, Morgan said, chewing her cereal, “only this year it’s weird because the sophomores are all our friends.” But even though that was true — they had all lived in the same dorm as freshmen — Lori and Morgan were pretty well excluded from the Rangerette fun. The girls had a saying about the organization: “You can’t understand it from the outside, and you can’t explain it from the inside,” and last year Lory and Morgan might as well have been in Alaska.
Still kickin’…
I walked over to a table of sophomore Rangerettes. A group of a dozen or so stopped talking and looked up at me suspiciously when I asked to sit down. They were all wearing matching baseball shirts with “Rettes” printed on the front and their last names on the back. Their sporty accessories were perfectly color-coordinated from mod tennies to glittery barrettes. On this particular day, the theme was red, white and navy blue. The girls live together in the same dorm, eat together and practice together, leaving one another only on weekends, when they drive back to their hometowns because there isn’t much to do in Kilgore, a town of 12,000.
Still kickin’…
But wherever they go, they are, first and foremost, Rangerettes. “We’re really big on reputation,” Hillary Hoffman told me. She and her sisters, Halley and Cali, who are from Coppell, have the distinction of being the drill team’s first triplets. “When you get together at a party, you’re still representing the Rangerettes.”
Pushing aside her food tray, a sophomore with curly brown hair said that she was having to adjust to her new status as a second-year Rangerette. A freshman, she explained, is constantly bossed around by the sophomores, so that by the time she graduates, she has thoroughly experienced the roles of follower and leader.
Still kickin’…
“It will be weird that the hopefuls can’t talk to us from now on,” she said, rising from her chair to head to morning practice. “And when we walk into the gym, they all have to greet us by our last names.”
A few minutes later, I witnessed that surreal tradition. As the Rangerettes filed into the gym, the hopefuls stopped stretching and beamed panicked, exaggerated smiles at them while raising their right hands high into the air, fingers spread. “Hello, Miss Satterwhite!” they yelled. “Hello, Miss Oden!” “Hello, Miss Coker!” If several sophomores walked in simultaneously, the girls screamed their rapid-fire, unintelligible greetings like superfriendly traders on the floor of the stock exchange.
Still kickin’…
If the scene sounds mortifying, keep in mind that none of these girls are shy. Several former Rangerettes have gone on to careers in entertainment, as noted by their alumnae organization, Rangerettes Forever, which also funds many of the girls’ scholarships.
By Monday night, five days before the final results would be announced, nerves have already begun to fray. But grace under pressure is a Rangerette tradition: the group’s slogan is “Beauty knows no pain.” I heard several stories of girls who kept smiling even after kicking so high they bloodied their own noses.
Still kickin’…
I’d heard stories how Gussie Nell Davis, the Rangerettes’ revered and beloved founder — who was never seen wearing anything but stylish suits and four-inch heels — once stomped up to a girl who had fainted on the field and yelled, “I have no time for this. Get up!” That evening, when director Blair announced a surprise evaluation of the dance routine the hopefuls had learned on Sunday, word was out that one stressed out girl had already packed up and left.
Still kickin’…
Morgan’s group of four nailed every move, while Lory’s group struggled, panicking in the middle of the routine until one of them remembered a key jump. Throughout the evaluation, however, the girls’ expression remained determinedly cheerful as they strutted and leaped across the floor. Even the one who had mono. Even the one who had slipped and fallen on her behind. Even the one who had thrown up in the middle of the routine.”
Katy Vine, “Alive and Kicking,” Texas Monthly, September, 2004
‘Your talent is in your choices’Stella Adler, drama teacher,to a young Marlon BrandoNew York City, circa 1947
