STRONG nouns | strong noun
Descriptivewritingisgood,buttoooftenauthorsdependonadjectivesandadverbstodothedescribing.WritingisstrongerwhenwritersuseSTRONGnounsandSTRONGverbs.Forexample,insteadofsaying,"Thelarge,shaggydogwasbreathingnoisilywithitsmouthopen,"say,"Thesheepdogpanted."Amuchstrongerwordpicture!Orinsteadofwriting,"Theverysmalldogwasmakinganirritatingnoise,"write,"Thetoypoodleyipped."Onceagain,astrongerwordpicture(formoreonwritingwordpictures,checkoutthe"WordPicturesBlog"[1]).Seethevideoaboveformoreexamplesofs...
Descriptive writing is good, but too often authors depend on adjectives and adverbs to do the describing. Writing is stronger when writers use STRONG nouns and STRONG verbs.
For example, instead of saying, " The large, shaggy dog was breathing noisily with its mouth open," say, "The sheepdog panted." A much stronger word picture! Or instead of writing, "The very small dog was making an irritating noise," write, "The toy poodle yipped." Once again, a stronger word picture (for more on writing word pictures, check out the "Word Pictures Blog"[1]).
See the video above for more examples of strong nouns and strong verbs. Share the video with your students for a mini-writing lesson (theyll enjoy and hopefully remember the noun and verb "muscles" in this video as a reminder when they write). Then have your students do the Strong Nouns, Strong Verbs handout below to practice writing their own strong nouns and verbs.
As alw...