Craft Lesson 2: Imagery

Materials:
Book: Standing Against the Wind by Traci L. Jones
Book: Acceleration by Graham McNamee

Discussion:
When students are describing items in their stories, they tend to play it safe. As teachers we need to point out that strong and vivid description supports a story. Description becomes richer when two things are compared, especially when the items being compared are not usually thought of as being placed together. Supplying examples from writers’ works will show students how comparison works.

How to Teach it:
A good story has a lot of description to support the characters and the plot. These descriptions allow us to get a better picture of what the write is trying to say. They do not tell us what happens, they show us. One way to write good description is to compare two things you would not normally place together. Listen to Traci L. Jones’s description of the character Patrice from the book Standing Against the Wind:

“Oh.” It was all Patrice could think of to say.
They walked in silence a few steps before Monty spoke again. “You know that
empty lot near school?”
Yeah, why?”
“Well, the whole lot is filled with junk and trash and crap, but last spring, in
the middle of the trash this flower bloomed. This pretty little flower, right
there, in the middle of a lot full of garbage. It was the weirdest thing. I mean,
where did it come from? I didn’t know whether to pick it or let it keep
growing. I’d go by there every day to look at that stupid flower ‘cause it was so
unique and pretty and it tripped me out that it could bloom in the middle of
all that trash. Then one day I went by and someone had thrown an old stuffed
chair over it and broke it. Killed it. I told myself that the next time I saw
something beautiful trying to survive in the middle of trash I’d do what I
could to protect it, to make sure it grew and that nobody messed it up. So, I
guess you’re my flower.” (Ch. 11, pp. 128-129)

Jones took the character Patrice and compared her to a flower who survives in the middle of a lot of trash. She does well at showing us what Patrice looks like amongst everything else by comparing her to a flower. You can visualize a flower and how pretty it is amongst the middle of piles of trash. Consider this next example from Graham McNamee’s book Acceleration where he describes the character Kim:

“I read somewhere—or maybe I saw it in a movie—how people who lose a leg
or an arm can still feel the missing limb sometimes. They’ll get this
impossible itch on a foot that isn’t there anymore, or they’ll feel an ache
where there’s nothing left to ache. They call it a phantom limb, because of the
ghost pains it still sends back to the brain.
That’s what Kim is like for me now—my phantom girlfriend. Gone, but still
aching.” (Ch. 9, p. 52)

Just like Patrice being compared to a flower, Kim is compared to a missing limb in which you can still feel. Even though it is gone, you still have pain. McNamee describes the missing limb very well where you can understand how Kim still causes pain to the main character even when she is not around anymore. You can see and feel the frustration of not being able to get rid of the itch or ache Kim is causing.

Bibliograhy:
Jones, T (2006). Standing Against the Wind. New York, NY: Farrar Straus Giroux.
McNamee, G (2003). Acceleration. New York, NY: Dell Laurel-Leaf.