Voice Lessons

Who wrote this?

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

“Your Majesty. Please… I don’t like to complain. But down here below, we are feeling great pain.”

"From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere!"

How did you know?

What is voice?

• It makes reading interesting.

• It makes us recognize certain authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien or Sandra Cisneros.

• It keeps us involved.• It adds color and texture

to communication.

• When you see a painting, it makes you recognize the artist as Van Gogh or Picasso.

• When you hear a song and know who is singing, that is voice.

• It is the expression of personality or the fingerprint of creativity.

Voice is created through conscious choices.

• The writer, painter, or musician purposefully chooses his or her “tools” (words, colors, instruments) and uses them in ways to create a certain effect.

• When you consider these conscious choices, ask yourself these questions.

• 1. What is he/she (or the work) saying? (What does it mean?)

• 2. How do you know? (What evidence from the work?)

• 3. How does he/she do that? (What tools does he/ she use to create meaning, and how does he/she use these tools?)

1. What is Van Gogh saying about himself? Complete the 2 statements as if you were the Van Gogh in the picture.

I am…….

I feel…….

2. How do you know what Van Gogh is saying about himself? What evidence can you find in the picture that supports your statements.

3. You try it. 4. Do the same with Marc Chagall, another famous artist. 5. Create a Venn diagram and show how they are similar and

different. Focus on the choices the artist made.

Read the simple sentence. The little pink fishes swam upstream and died.1. Is this sentence sad? Think about this carefully.

Don’t focus on the idea of a dying fish. Instead, focus on the sentence itself and the effect it produces. Does the sentence make you feel sad, or like crying, when you read it? Why or why not?

2.Most people will agree that the sentence is not very sad. Why? What specific characteristics in the sentence keep it from being sad? As you identify these characteristics, you are beginning to look at the tools writers have to choose from as they create voice.

3.You try it. Write a sad version of the sentence, The little pink fishes swam upstream and died. What did you do to make it sad? What conscious choices did you make?

Elements of Voice

• 1. Diction: This is the author’s choice of words. It is the foundation of all good writing.

• 2. Detail: These are the facts, observations, and incidents that develop a topic. Writing is flat and boring without detail.

• 3. Figurative language: This is the use of words in an unusual way to reveal new meaning, meaning that is not literal and makes the reader think.

Elements of Voice cont.

• 4. Imagery: The use of words to capture a sensory experience ( what you hear, see, taste, touch, and smell). Imagery brings life to what you write and makes it seem real.

• 5. Syntax: This includes sentence structure, word order, and punctuation.

• Tone: This is the expression of attitude in writing. Writers express tone through the use of diction, detail, imagery, figurative language, and syntax.

Diction: The author’s choice of words

• The perfect word is clear, concrete, and exact.• It perfectly expresses the feeling and ideas you want to

get across.• Some words are forbidden; they have lost their freshness

and impact. Eliminate the following forbidden words from your vocabulary: Good, nice, pretty, beautiful, fine, bad, thing, really, very, terrible, wonderful, and a lot.

Denotation & Connotation

• Denotation: the literal meaning of a word

• Ambitious & eager: desirous of reaching a goal

• Connotation: the meaning suggested by a word, the feeling evoked by a word

• Ambitious: feeling of wanting something for selfish reasons, that sometimes ignores the feelings of others

• Eager: a feeling of enthusiasm & fresh optimism. (more positive)

Words can be formal or informal, depending on the writer’s audience and purpose

• Formal: If you are writing a school paper to convince the principal that your opinion about school uniforms is the correct one, you should use formal, strong, and specific words with clearly understood meanings.

• If you are writing a short story to be read by people your own age, you might want to use slang and lots of teen dialect.

Read & Think: Diction

• A redheaded woman was there with Trout. Kate could see her rummaging through the cabin, dumping drawers and knocking things from the shelves of cabinets. (Louis Sachar, Holes )

• What picture do you get in your mind when you read the second sentence?

• How would the meaning change if we changed some of the words? For example:

• Kate could see her searching through the cabin, empting drawers and taking things off of the shelves of cabinets.

DictionNow you try it:•Write a sentence describing a small

boy making a mess in a restaurant. Choose words that are clear, concrete, and exact. • Start a collection of ”perfect” words

you can use later in your writing.

Perfect Words: Make two columns to with headings to “collect” your words.

Perfect Action words

(Verbs)

Slouch instead of stand

Perfect words to describe something

(Adjectives)

Delicate instead of pretty

Read and Think: Diction

• M.C. heard him scramble and strain his way up the slope of Sarah’s mountain. (Virginia Hamilton, M. C. Higgins, the Great)

• 1. What does it mean to scramble and strain up a mountain? Picture this. What do you see?

• 2. How would it change your mental picture if we rewrote the sentence like this?

M. C. heard him walk up the slope of Sarah’s mountain.

Write a sentence describing someone slowly climbing a flight of stairs. Use the 1st sentence as a model. Add any new words to your “perfect” words list.

Figurative Language

Figurative language is any language that is not used in a literal way. It’s a way of saying one thing to mean another. For instance, when we go to a baseball game, we might make comments like these:• That catcher was the bomb!• That ball just sat there in the outfield.• Jimmy ran like a cheetah to first base.

Overused figurative language

Figurative language is extremely useful, but it can be overdone. When we use a figure of speech over and over again it becomes a cliché, a stale, overused expression that lacks uniqueness. Consider the following:

• Pretty as a picture• Quiet as a mouse• Laughter is the best medicine• Every cloud has a silver lining• It happened in the dead of night.

Similes and Metaphors

Metaphors and similes are used to compare things that are not usually seen as similar. Metaphors imply the comparison, and similes state the comparison directly. For example: • “That test was a bear!”• “Taking that test was like struggling with a bear!”

Personification

Personification is a special kind of metaphor that gives human qualities to something that is not human. For example, “The tree sighed sadly in the cold.”

Read and Think: Figurative language

I was seven. I lay in the car

Watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.

My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

-Naomi Shihab Nye “Making a Fist”

1.What is the metaphor in this poem? What does the metaphor mean?

2. How would the meaning and impact of these lines change if Nye said simply, My stomach really hurts?

Figurative languageNow you try it:

Describe a place you like to go in summer. In your description, • use one simile or metaphor and • one example of personification.