Journal 2 is an exercise in developing your writing skills, specifically creating varied sentences. Earnest Hemingway, a prolific and celebrated writer, is the master of using clauses to enhance the descriptive details of his writing. While I do not necessarily want such convoluted descriptions in your writing this semester, I do want you to experiment with sentence construction and concrete diction to add complexity to your syntax (sentence structure).
Read the following passage from Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises. In it, Hemingway conveys gloominess and dread by describing the weather.
“In the morning it was raining. A fog had come over the mountains from the sea. You could not see the tops of the mountains. The plateau was dull and gloomy, and the shapes of the trees and the houses were changed. I walked out beyond the town to look at the weather. The bad weather was coming over the mountains from the sea.”
Write a short story that conveys the mood of two characters by describing the weather that surrounds them. I should be able to understand the mood of the characters by the sensory details that you use in describing the weather, so good use of diction and tone are important here.
Getting Started
If you’re having trouble getting started, try the exercise below.
Think of a place you know very well. Ideally, it is a place you have visited recently enough to recall plenty of concrete details.
Brainstorm about the place: how it looks at different times of day, how it smells, what objects can be found in it. Think about why the place is meaningful to you and what memories you have associated with it: especially, how your five senses are awakened when you are there.
Blank Template using the Hemingway paragraph above:
(Prepositional phrase indicating time), it was (adjective relating to weather). A/an (noun) had come (prepositional phrase indicating location) (prepositional phrase indicating direction). You (action verb) (noun). The (noun) was (adjective) and (adjective), and the (noun+prepositional phrase) and the (noun) (verb past tense). (Subject of the story) (verb) (prepositional phrase indicating direction) to (verb) at the (noun). The (type of weather) was (verb) ( (prepositional phrase indicating location) (prepositional phrase indicating direction).
Once you’ve written from the template, you’ll be surprised at how quickly words continue to flow.
Other Stylistic Devices to Note:
Other writers develop their voices through stylistic choices. John Steinbeck uses several devices in Cannery Row.
· A syntax that rambles, lists, and “piles” word upon word using commas and “ands,” gives a sense of how much is contained in a place.
· Diction that juxtaposes shorter words with longer words sets the pace of the sentence, (“a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light”); gives an exceptionally specific sense of detail (“sardine canneries of corrugated iron”); and shows the complexity and contradictory nature of places and people (“gathered and scattered”)
· Alliteration (“canneries of corrugated iron”) is the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of consecutive words and adds a poetic context to highlight images or important phrasing for the reader.
You will submit your story as a journal entry, which means it must be in standard MLA format (with a header, page numbers, and everything else that MLA style entails). Because this is a story