•

- adroit Dexterous, agile.
- adumbrate To very gently suggest.
- aestivate To summer, to spend the summer.
- ailurophile A cat-lover.
- amaryllis Bulbous plants which have large red or pink flowers.
- anemone Any of various plants of the buttercup family, having petal-like sepals.
- aqua A light greenish-blue color.
- asphodel Plants having white, pink, or yellow flowers in elongated clusters.
- banana Herbs having a crown of large, entire leaves and a hanging cluster of fruits.
- beatific Befitting an angel or saint.
- beleaguer To exhaust with attacks.
- blandiloquent Beautiful and flattering.
- bliss
- blossom
- blue
- bobolink
- bubble
- bumblebee
- butterfly
- caliginous Dark and misty.
- camellia
- cerulean
- chalice
- champagne An effervescent wine.
- chatoyant Like a cat’s eye.
- chattanooga
- cherish
- chiaroscuro The arrangement of dark and light elements in a picture.
- chimes
- choas The exponential divergence of two arbitrarily close points in phase space.
- cockle A heart-shaped bivalve or a garden flower.
- coconut
- colporteur A book peddler.
- conflate To blend together, to combine different things.
- cosmopolitan
- cozy
- cuspidor
- cute
- cynosure A focal point of admiration.
- damask
- dawn
- delicacy
- destiny
- desuetude Disuse.
- diaphanous Filmy.
- diffuse Spread out, not focused or concentrated.
- dulcet Sweet, sugary.
- ebullient Bubbling with enthusiasm.
- effervescent Bubbly.
- efflorescence Flowering, the opening of buds or a bloom.
- elixir A good potion.
- elysium Any place or state of perfect happiness; paradise.
- emollient A softener.
- encomium A spoken or written work in praise of someone.
- inglenook The place beside the fireplace.
- enthusiasm
- ephemeral Short-lived.
- epicure A person who enjoys fine living, especially food and drink.
- epiphany A sudden revelation.
- erstwhile At one time, for a time.
- eschew To reject or avoid.
- esculent Edible.
- esoteric Understood only by a small group of specialists.
- eternity
- ethereal Gaseous, invisible but detectable.
- etiolate White from no contact with light.
- evanescent Vanishing quickly, lasting a very short time.
- explosion
- extravaganza
- exuberant Enthusiastic, excited.
- fantastic
- fawn
- felicitous Pleasing.
- fescue A variety of grass favored for pastures.
- flabbergasted
- flip-flop
- foudroyant Dazzling.
- fragile Very, very delicate.
- freedom
- fugacious Running, escaping.
- fuselage
- galaxy
- gambol To skip or leap about joyfully.
- gazebo
- giggle
- glamour Beauty.
- golden
- gorgeous
- gossamer The finest piece of thread, a spider’s silk.
- gothic
- grace
- gracious
- gum
- halcyon Happy, sunny, care-free.
- harbors of memory
- hen-night
- hiccup
- hilarious
- hippopotamus
- hodgepodge
- home
- hope
- hush
- hymeneal Having to do with a wedding.
- if
- imbricate To overlap to form a regular pattern.
- imbroglio An altercation or complicated situation.
- imbue To infuse, instill.
- incipient Beginning, in an early stage.
- ingénue A naïve young woman.
- inspissate To thicken.
- inure To jade.
- jejune Dull; childish.
- jonquil
- kangaroo
- lagniappe A gift given to a customer for their patronage.
- lagoon A small gulf or inlet in the sea.
- languor Listlessness, inactivity.
- lassitude Weariness, listlessness.
- laughter The response to something funny.
- liberty
- lilt To move musically or lively, to have a lively sound.
- lithe Slender and flexible.
- lollipop
- loquacious Talkative.
- love
- lovely
- lullaby
- luminous
- luxuriant Thick, lavish.
- marigold
- meandering
- mellifluous Sweet-sounding.
- melody
- mignonette
- missive A message or letter.
- mist
- moiety One of two equal parts, a half.
- moment
- mondegreen A misanalyzed phrase.
- mother
- murmuring
- myrrh
- nebulous Foggy.
- nevermore
- niveous Snowy, snow-like.
- nobility
- obsequious Fawning, subservience.
- odalisque A concubine in a harem.
- oeuvre A work.
- offing That part of the sea between the horizon and the offshore.
- oi
- oleander
- onomatopoeia The creation of words by imitating sound.
- oriole
- paean A formal expression of praise.
- palimpsest A manuscript written over one or more earlier ones.
- panacea A complete solution for all problems.
- panoply A complete set.
- paradox
- passion
- pastiche A mixture of art work (art or music) from various sources.
- pavement
- peace
- peccadillo A peculiarity.
- peek-a-boo
- pelagic Related to the sea or ocean.
- penumbra A half-shadow, the edge of a shadow.
- peregrination Wandering, travels.
- petrichor The smell of earth after a rain.
- plethora A great quantity.
- porcelain A fine white clay pottery.
- potamophilous Loving rivers.
- propinquity An inclination or preference.
- pumpkin
- pyrrhic Victorious despite heavy losses.
- quintessential The ultimate, the essence of the essence.
- rainbow
- redolent Sweet-smelling.
- renaissance
- rhapsody A beautiful musical piece.
- riparian Having to do with the bank of a river or other body of water.
- ripple A small, circular wave emanating from a central point.
- rosemary
- scintillate To sparkle with brilliant light.
- sempiternal Forever and ever.
- sentiment
- seraglio Housing for a harem.
- serendipity Finding something while looking for something else.
- shenandoah
- shipshape
- smashing
- smile
- smithereens
- soliloquy Dramatic speech intended to give the illusion of unspoken reflections.
- sophisticated
- summer afternoon
- sunflower
- sunshine
- surreptitious Sneaky.
- susurrus Producing a hushing sound, like flowing water.
- sweetheart
- sycamore
- symbiosis Interdependence of two different species.
- syzygy The direct opposition of two heavenly bodies.
- talisman A symbolic object believed to have magical powers.
- tendril
- terpsichorean Related to dance.
- thrush
- tickle
- tintinnabulation Ringing.
- tranquil
- tranquility
- twinkle
- umbrageous Shady.
- umbrella
- vermillion
- vestige A small fragment.
- whisper Speaking without vibrating the vocal folds.
- whoops
- wisteria
- zing
- zyzzyva A kind of beetle.
•
If I Taught Creative Writing

now, if you were teaching creative
writing, he asked, what would you
tell them?
Iâd tell them to have an unhappy love
affair, hemorrhoids, bad teeth
and to drink cheap wine,
to keep switching the head of their
bed from wall to wall
and then Iâd tell them to have
another unhappy love affair
and never to use a silk typewriter
ribbon,
avoid family picnics
or being photographed in a rose
garden;
read Hemingway only once,
skip Faulkner
ignore Gogol
stare at photos of Gertrude Stein
and read Sherwood Anderson in bed
while eating Ritz crackers,
realize that people who keep
talking about sexual liberation
are more frightened than you are.
listen to E. Power Biggs work the
organ on your radio while youâre
rolling Bull Durham in the dark
in a strange town
with one day left on the rent
after having given up
friends, relatives and jobs.
never consider yourself superior and /
or fair
and never try to be.
have another unhappy love affair.
watch a fly on a summer curtain.
never try to succeed.
donât shoot pool.
be righteously angry when you
find your car has a flat tire.
take vitamins but donât lift weights or jog.
then after all this
reverse the procedure.
have a good love affair.
and the thing
you might learn
is that nobody knows anythingâ
not the State, nor the mice
the garden hose or the North Star.
and if you ever catch me
teaching a creative writing class
and you read this back to me
Iâll give you a straight A
right up the pickle
barrel.
•
HOW TO BE A BAD WRITER (in Ten Easy Lessons) by Langston Hughes

1. Use all the cliches possible, such as âHe had a gleam in his eye,â or âHer teeth were white as pearls.â
2. If you are a Negro, try very hard to write with an eye dead on the white marketâuse modern stereotypes of older stereotypesâbig burly Negroes, criminals, low-lifers and prostitutes.
3. Put in a lot of profanity and as many pages as possible of near pornography and you will be so modern you pre-date Pompei in your lonely crusade toward the best seller lists. By all means, be misunderstood, unappreciated and ahead of your time in print and out, then you can be felt sorry for.
4. Never Characterize Characters. Just name them and then let them go for themselves. Let all of them talk the same way. If the reader hasnât imagination enough to make something out of cardboard cut-outs, shame on him!
5. Write about China, Greece, Tibet, or the Argentine pampasâanyplace youâve never seen and know nothing about. Never write about anything you know, your hometown, or your home folks, or yourself.
6. Have nothing to say, but use a great many words, particularly high-sounding words, to say it.
7. If a playwright, put into your script a lot of hand-waving and spirituals, preferably the ones everybody has heard a thousand times from Marion Anderson to the Golden Gates.
8. If a poet, rhyme June with moon as often and in as many ways as possible. Also, use theeâs and thouâs and âtis and oâer, and invert your sentences all the time. Never say âThe sun rose, bright and shining.â But, rather, âBright and shining rose the sun.â
9. Pay no attention really to spelling or grammar or the neatness of the manuscript. And in writing letters, never sign your name so anyone can read it. A rapid scrawl will better indicate how important and how busy you are.
10. Drink as much liquor as possible and always write under the influence of alcohol. When you canât afford alcohol yourself, or even if you can, drink on your friends, fans and the general public.
If you are white, there are many more things I can advise in order to be a bad writer, but since this piece is for colored writers, there are some things I know a Negro just will not do not even for writingâs sake, so there is no use mentioning them.
Originally published in The Harlem Quarterly (ed. John Henrik Clarke), 1950.
•

To write well you must speak well, or at least know what good speaking sounds like. Here’s the building blocks to that, at least knowing what these figures of speech are called so that you may draw from them– AF
Figures of Speech
Figures of speech are expressions that stretch words beyond their literal meanings. By connecting or juxtaposing different sounds and thoughts, figures of speech increase the breadth and subtlety of expression.
Alliteration: The repetition of similar sounds, usually consonants, at the beginning of words. For example, Robert Frostâs poem âOut, outââ contains the alliterative phrase âsweet scented stuff.â
Aposiopesis: A breaking-off of speech, usually because of rising emotion or excitement. For example, âTouch me one more time, and I swearââ
Apostrophe: A direct address to an absent or dead person, or to an object, quality, or idea. Walt Whitmanâs poem âO Captain, My Captain,â written upon the death of Abraham Lincoln, is an example of apostrophe.
Assonance: The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sequence of nearby words. For example, Alfred, Lord Tennyson creates assonance with the âoâ sound in this line from âThe Lotos-Eatersâ: âAll day the wind breathes low with mellower tone.â
Cacophony: The clash of discordant or harsh sounds within a sentence or phrase. Cacophony is a familiar feature of tongue twisters but can also be used to poetic effect, as in the words âanfractuous rocksâ in T. S. Eliotâs âSweeney Erect.â Although dissonance has a different musical meaning, it is sometimes used interchangeably with âcacophony.â
Chiasmus: Two phrases in which the syntax is the same but the placement of words is reversed, as in these lines from Samuel Taylor Coleridgeâs âThe Pains of Sleepâ: âTo be beloved is all I need, / And whom I love, I love indeed.â
ClichĂ©: An expression such as âturn over a new leafâ that has been used so frequently it has lost its expressive power.
Colloquialism: An informal expression or slang, especially in the context of formal writing, as in Philip Larkinâs âSend No Moneyâ: âAll the other lads there / Were itching to have a bash.â
Conceit: An elaborate parallel between two seemingly dissimilar objects or ideas. The metaphysical poets (see Literary Movements, below) are especially known for their conceits, as in John Donneâs âThe Flea.â
Epithet: An adjective or phrase that describes a prominent feature of a person or thing. âRichard âthe Lionheartâ â and â âShoelessâ Joe Jacksonâ are both examples of epithets.
Euphemism: The use of decorous language to express vulgar or unpleasant ideas, events, or actions. For example, âpassed awayâ instead of âdiedâ; âethnic cleansingâ instead of âgenocide.â
Euphony: A pleasing arrangement of sounds. Many consider âcellar doorâ one of the most euphonious phrases in English.
Hyperbole: An excessive overstatement or conscious exaggeration of fact: âIâve told you about it a million times already.â
Idiom: A common expression that has acquired a meaning that differs from its literal meaning, such as âitâs raining cats and dogsâ or âa bolt from the blue.â
Litotes: A form of understatement in which a statement is affirmed by negating its opposite: âHe is not unfriendly.â
Meiosis: Intentional understatement, as, for example, in Shakespeareâs Romeo and Juliet, when Mercutio is mortally wounded and says it is only âa scratch.â Meiosis is the opposite of hyperbole and often employs litotes to ironic effect.
Metaphor: The comparison of one thing to another that does not use the terms âlikeâ or âas.â Shakespeare is famous for his metaphors, as in Macbeth: âLife is but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.â
- Mixed metaphor: A combination of metaphors that produces a confused or contradictory image, such as âThe companyâs collapse left mountains of debt in its wake.â
Metonymy: The substitution of one term for another that generally is associated with it. For example, âsuitsâ instead of âbusinessmen.â
Onomatopoeia: The use of words, such as âpop,â âhiss,â and âboing,â that sound like the thing they refer to.
Oxymoron: The association of two contrary terms, as in the expressions âsame differenceâ or âwise fool.â
Paradox: A statement that seems absurd or even contradictory on its face but often expresses a deeper truth. For example, a line in Oscar Wildeâs âThe Ballad of Reading Gaolâ: âAnd all men kill the thing they love.â
Paralipsis: Also known as praeteritio, the technique of drawing attention to something by claiming not to mention it. For example, from Herman Melvilleâs Moby-Dick: âWe will not speak of all Queequegâs peculiarities here; how he eschewed coffee and hot rolls, and applied his undivided attention to beefsteaks, done rare.â
Parallelism: The use of similar grammatical structures or word order in two sentences or phrases to suggest a comparison or contrast between them. In Shakespeareâs âSonnet 129â: âBefore, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.â Parallelism also can refer to parallels between larger elements in a narrative (see Literary Techniques, below).
Pathetic fallacy: The attribution of human feeling or motivation to a nonhuman object, especially an object found in nature. For example, John Keatsâs âOde to Melancholyâ describes a âweepingâ cloud.
Periphrasis: An elaborate and roundabout manner of speech that uses more words than necessary. Saying âI appear to be entirely without financial resourcesâ instead of âIâm brokeâ is an example. Euphemisms often employ periphrasis.
Personification: The use of human characteristics to describe animals, things, or ideas. Carl Sandburgâs poem âChicagoâ describes the city as âStormy, husky, brawling, / City of the Big Shoulders.â
Pun: A play on words that exploits the similarity in sound between two words with distinctly different meanings. For example, the title of Oscar Wildeâs play The Importance of Being Earnest is a pun on the word âearnest,â which means âserious or sober,â and the name âErnest,â which figures into a scheme that some of the playâs main characters perpetrate.
Rhetorical question: A question that is asked not to elicit a response but to make an impact or call attention to something. For example, the question âIsnât she great?â expresses regard for another person and does not call for discussion.
Sarcasm: A simple form of verbal irony (see Literary Techniques, below) in which it is obvious from context and tone that the speaker means the opposite of what he or she says. Sarcasm usually, but not always, expresses scorn. Commenting âThat was gracefulâ when someone trips and falls is an example.
Simile: A comparison of two things through the use of âlikeâ or âas.â The title of Robert Burnsâs poem âMy Love Is Like a Red, Red Roseâ is a simile.
Synaesthesia: The use of one kind of sensory experience to describe another, such as in the line âHeard melodies are sweetâ in John Keatsâs âOde on a Grecian Urn.â
Synecdoche: A form of metonymy in which a part of an entity is used to refer to the whole, for example, âmy wheelsâ for âmy car.â
Trope: A category of figures of speech that extend the literal meanings of words by inviting a comparison to other words, things, or ideas. Metaphor, metonymy, and simile are three common tropes.
Zeugma: The use of one word in a sentence to modify two other words in the sentence, typically in two different ways. For example, in Charles Dickensâs The Pickwick Papers, the sentence âMr. Pickwick took his hat and his leaveâ uses the word âtookâ to mean two different things.
•

How to Write With Style
by Kurt Vonnegut
Newspaper reporters and technical writers are trained to reveal almost nothing about themselves in their writings. This makes them freaks in the world of writers, since almost all of the other ink-stained wretches in that world reveal a lot about themselves to readers. We call these revelations, accidental and intentional, elements of style.
These revelations tell us as readers what sort of person it is with whom we are spending time. Does the writer sound ignorant or informed, stupid or bright, crooked or honest, humorless or playful– ? And on and on.
Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you’re writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your readers will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead — or, worse, they will stop reading you.
The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don’t you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an emptyheaded writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.
So your own winning style must begin with ideas in your head.
1. Find a subject you care about
Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.
I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way — although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.
2. Do not ramble, though
I won’t ramble on about that.
3. Keep it simple
As for your use of language: Remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. “To be or not to be?” asks Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favorite sentence in his short story “Eveline” is this one: “She was tired.” At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do.
Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
4. Have guts to cut
It may be that you, too, are capable of making necklaces for Cleopatra, so to speak. But your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.
5. Sound like yourself
The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was Conrad’s third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.
In some of the more remote hollows of Appalachia, children still grow up hearing songs and locutions of Elizabethan times. Yes, and many Americans grow up hearing a language other than English, or an English dialect a majority of Americans cannot understand.
All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens to not be standard English, and if it shows itself when your write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue.
I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.
6. Say what you mean
I used to be exasperated by such teachers, but am no more. I understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant them to say. My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all. They hoped that I would become understandable — and therefore understood. And there went my dream of doing with words what Pablo Picasso did with paint or what any number of jazz idols did with music. If I broke all the rules of punctuation, had words mean whatever I wanted them to mean, and strung them together higgledy-piggledy, I would simply not be understood. So you, too, had better avoid Picasso-style or jazz-style writing, if you have something worth saying and wish to be understood.
Readers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us.
7. Pity the readers
They have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately. They have to read, an art so difficult that most people don’t really master it even after having studied it all through grade school and high school — twelve long years.
So this discussion must finally acknowledge that our stylistic options as writers are neither numerous nor glamorous, since our readers are bound to be such imperfect artists. Our audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient readers, ever willing to simplify and clarify — whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd, singing like nightingales.
That is the bad news. The good news is that we Americans are governed under a unique Constitution, which allows us to write whatever we please without fear of punishment. So the most meaningful aspect of our styles, which is what we choose to write about, is utterly unlimited.
8. For really detailed advice
For a discussion of literary style in a narrower sense, in a more technical sense, I recommend to your attention The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. E.B. White is, of course, one of the most admirable literary stylists this country has so far produced.
You should realize, too, that no one would care how well or badly Mr. White expressed himself, if he did not have perfectly enchanting things to say.
In Sum:
1. Find a subject you care about
2. Do not ramble, though
3. Keep it simple
4. Have guts to cut
5. Sound like yourself
6. Say what you mean
7. Pity the readers