One course the Book Writing World offers members is “Trading Trade Secrets.” Here, we peer at sharp passages of writing to tease apart the techniques that make great prose sing. I’ve already covered openings, dialog, voice and point of view, character in conflict, symbol, desire and escalation and the crisis choice.
Each month, when the Book Writing World features a distinguished visiting author, I will use that writer’s work to demonstrate more “trade secrets.” Imitating these, the way that student artists go to museums and sketch the masters, is a great way to build your writing muscles. Ultimately, you will find your own voice through the lens of what you read and absorb.
For May, my visiting author is the splendid, brilliant Kate Moses, whose new memoir, Cakewalk, is out this month. I’ve written about that book here and here. We will be posting our interview with Kate soon, but in the meanwhile, I thought I’d share the Trade Secret lesson on this blog.
Kate’s prose is as mouthwatering as the recipes she includes in Cakewalk. In the interview, she quotes her teacher, Arlen Hansen as saying that “verbs make art.” She also mentions keeping vocabulary lists, herself, as so I started by leafing back through the book to make a list of some of the wonderful verbs:
Verbs
Trotted
Capturing
Leaned
Perches
Flexed
Wafting
Promoting
Yowled
Chaperoned
As I tried to isolate the verbs, I realized that it is the unexpected but exact contexts in which Moses places the verbs that make them so strong. By themselves, the verbs flex a bit of muscle, but it is much more powerful to find a salt storm “kicked up” than a leg, or to find that “the midday sky closed up and went black” than a window.
So here are some more examples from Cakewalk with a bit of context:
” . . .my mother erupting out of our house . . .”
“Apple butter oozed out of the omelets . . .”
“My mother stockpiled drinks by the case . . .”
“. . . a salt storm kicked up while we were crossing the Great Salt Lake Desert. . . . visibility nil as the storm continued to hiss at the windows, sandblasting the paint off our car . . .”
“the midday sky closed up and went black”
Of course, for the best context of all, eat up the confectionary book whole. And for your trade secrets exercise, make a list of verbs you love and then use them in ways that are not typical but which fit your purpose.
Post an example in the comments below!
I love this look at verbs, and the idea of making a list of favorite verbs. I’m not quite ready to leave an example yet, though I’ll work on it! Oh, well, here goes…I like the verb “to paw,” and maybe a sentence could be: “with the bread in hand, he pawed the gravy.” Not good, but you get the idea.
Thanks!
I just noticed the time on my post. It says 3:32 p.m. But it’s 8:32 p.m. Are we on Paris time?
so simply and hltesnoy, It takes a while I found all this really inspiring because I invariably find myself in this same conundrum and often criticize myself for it. Now I will try to treat this as a normal part of my writing process instead. I also loved her idea about writing down everything possible about a topic every possible detail and sleeping on it before actually using the material. She calls her process, plowing up something in your subconscious . I’ve heard it called capturing shimmering images of one’s past. Another key thought for me: she doesn’t do things chronologically; instead relies on the emotional chronology where the sensory associations about one’s experiences tie the story together. I can see how that approach frees one from the tyranny of being slavish to the sequence of events. Kate referred to viewing the world (the story) as a kaleidoscope a constantly changing pattern of images. Love this concept! And more the video was well done. Intimate. Warm. Unlike others, I found the cat’s tail distracting after awhile. Maybe because I wanted to focus on Kate instead! It’s all good, however. Thanks Angie and Elizabeth for this gift.