With the summer months upon the northern hemisphere, some fiction writers and bloggers will attend to the most favored of all seasons (except if you’re already somewhere hot…then it’s just annoying). Unfortunately, because of the common vocabulary bank tied to the summer experience, after a few dozen stories the flow and bounce of words will start to repeat themselves. So here’s a chance to challenge yourself: write a poem/short story about summer, without using the list of words below.
“barbecue”
“beach”
“bright”
“cloud”
“cool”
“dress”
“flowers”
“hazy”
“hot” (or any variance, like “heat”)
“ice”
“ice cream”
“ocean”
“outside”
“pool”
“popsicle”
“rain”
“roadtrip”
“season”
“shorts”
“sky”
“summer” (duh)
“sun” (or anything with “sun” in it, i.e. sunshine, sunglasses, etc.)
“tan”
“temperature”
“travel”
“vacation”
There could be plenty more to add here but I don’t want to ask the impossible. The trick here isn’t to pound thesaurus.com’s servers; substituting “orange ball of fire above” for “sun” is kind of an el cheapo maneuver but still well within the rules. The challenge is more to train ourselves to describe something by expanding our word usage by tossing out terminology readily associated with the summer season, and to assemble a mental picture through a narrative avenue using an entire other grab-bag of words — “delivering the point” or the spirit of the summertime life in a nuanced or roundabout way.
Additionally, it’s another way to respect your reader by not “writing down” to them in handing them a narrative already packaged together, and to leave them to their faculties to piece the idea/scene together. If you’re having a hard time doing this, that’s a good sign — if you’re stretching your mind you are probably going to stretch your readers’ minds, too.
Later in the week I’ll post my writing sans the verboten list of words above. If you can resist the siren’s call of nice weather outside, try this writing challenge yourself, and if there are any other obvious words that I should have included, feel free to list them in the comments.
3 Comments
sounds like a good idea. I am up for the challenge.
Okay Jay, I did a throwback here. It’s just a simple fun poem. It is perhaps an homage to a writing assignment we once all did in school after such a summer. Here it is:
I dream of days of noon time breakfasts
Reruns made for black and white televisions
Blockbuster movies and popcorn buckets
And midnight games with dragons and dungeons
Two and three and four days in pajamas
But growing boredom begins robbing appreciation
For careless naps and stress-free laughs
Perhaps Truth or Dare, round two, to break the numb
Soon nagging mothers bring deafening complaints
Of couches littered with crusty bowls and crumbs
Yelling, “Turn off the TV. No more video games…
And will you get outside you lazy bums!”
Dread that it is all soon over begins
Just memories of the buffet of recreation and fun
Fall brings books, tests, and answering for grades again
And living all year for the next one
Good one Jason! The description of the school year starting soon again is a good way to get the idea of summer across. I played video games like a banshee during the summer, when I wasn’t in camp, at least.
Bobby, looking forward to yours.
I will post mine later today.
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