a bag of tricks

This is in honor of my friend, Jill, who loves words and how they look, sound, and fit together. This is a list of several 'tricks' to help you in writing or revising poems, stories, or any writing piece. The more comfortable you become with each of them, the easier it will be to pull one out when you need it.

1. Put your adjectives after your nouns.

"The tiger, marvellously striped and irritable, leaps..."

2. Delay the subject of your sentence.

"Because I could not stop for Death--He kindly stopped for me..." Emily Dickinson

3. An interruption: Put something between your subject and your verb.

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" William Butler Yeats, 'The Second Coming'

4. Start with a pronoun and then give us the noun it refers to.

"What do they sing, the last birds, coasting down the twilight..." G. Kinnell, "Last Songs"

5. Double or triple your subject, but use one verb.

"The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna, are not very pure or true..." Sylvia Plath

Jill...which one do you like the best?