"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is . . . the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning." -Mark Twain
For years, this quote hung from the ceiling in my ELA classroom. It's still pinned on the bulletin board above my writing desk. Mark Twain's quote is especially true when writing poetry. With only a few words on the page, writers need their words to strike like lightning.
How can we help students choose the right words for their poems? I'll begin to answer that question with another of my favorite quotes. (Yes, this one also dangled from my classroom ceiling.)
In order to chose the right words, the best words, the "lightning words," writers need to soak themselves in words. One way accomplish this is to create a classroom WORD BOWL. (I discuss how and why to use word bowls in THIS POST.) Another way to hone word selection is to use a thesaurus and create what I call WORD WHIRLS.
What are WORD WHIRLS? They are simply brainstormed lists of words associated with a topic. Whenever I write a new poem, I start with a WORD WHIRL. I'll demonstrate how this process works with my poem "Advice from an Ancient" from my poetry collection Leafy Landmarks: Travels with Trees, a road trip to visit famous and historic trees around the United States.
"Advice from an Ancient" is about the oldest living single trees on earth, bristlecone pines. In researching these amazing trees, which live for thousands of years in extremely harsh conditions, a few words stood out as key descriptors: ancient, harsh, worn, patient, persevere, knotted, and ribboned. These descriptors became my anchor words. I looked up these anchor words on thesaurus.com (one of my favorite writing tools) and compiled a list of synonyms for each. Here is a page from my writing journal that shows my bristlecone pine WORD WHIRL:
As you can see, this WORD WHIRL produced a slew of word possibilities. Now I could choose the "right" ones, the most specific, best sounding words to fit my poem. I still wrote many drafts, playing with different word combinations and poetry forms, but this WORD WHIRL gave me the rich language I needed to start composing.
Here is the published poem. You'll notice many of the WORD WHIRL words made it into the final version:
To make the process easy for students, I've created a WORD WHIRL TEMPLATE, which you can download HERE.
Try using WORD WHIRLS at the beginning of your next poetry (or really any descriptive writing) lesson. Once your students are drenched in words, they can choose the right ones to make their ideas strike like lightning!
Awesome process and strategy!
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