You should have a good start on your short story by now. See if you can make your narrative even more powerful in its effect on readers by strengthening your word choices and your use of descriptive techniques. The tabs below will help you review the techniques demonstrated in this lesson. Study each tab carefully and then revise your short story draft, using this lesson's skills to enhance your story's most important scenes and details.
Increase Precision
Use Your Senses
Figure It Out
Precise language is language that uses exactly the right words to communicate what the author has in mind. As a writer, you can help readers "see what you see" if you replace vague or general words with more exact and specific words.
Which of these sentences is written with more precision? Click the sentence to check your answer.
| Sidney saw that there was a box on the porch. | No, this sentence is much more vague and general than the other one. The verbs saw and was are not very specific--they don't reveal much about the situation. |
| Sidney spied a large, battered cardboard box leaning against the porch railing. | Yes! This sentence helps the reader imagine how suspicious the box looked to Sidney. |
One of the first things you learned after you were born was how to use the five senses to receive information about the world. You can use those same five senses to communicate with readers about what is going on in your story. If you include details that appeal to all of the senses, you help readers imagine how your story sounds, smells, tastes, and feels as well as how it looks. As a result, your readers will feel more immersed in, or part of, the story--and that will make them eager to know how things turn out.
Which of these passages includes details that appeal to all five senses?
| Lara climbed the ladder to the small room at the top. Shards of light shone through the cracks between the boards of the walls, which were rough and splintery under her palms. The room smelled like ripe cherries and was humming with bees--it had been built in a cherry tree, after all. Lara had eaten some on her way up and still had their tartness on her tongue. | Yes, this sentence includes details that appeal to all fives senses--sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. |
| Doug lowered himself carefully into the well. Its sides were slick with moisture under his hands, and the air smelled of damp, dark earth. When his sneakers rubbed off a bit of shale, Doug heard a distant small splash far, far below. He wondered how long it would take to reach the bottom if he fell. | This passage includes details related to touch, smell, and sound, but NOT taste or sight. |
Figures of speech, also known as figurative language, can help you explain what something in your story looks, sounds, or acts like--even if most readers have never encountered that thing before. That's because metaphors, similes, and other comparisons remind readers of something they do know to help them understand something new or different.
If your story includes objects, events, or ideas that some readers won't have seen before, or if you're trying to describe something truly unique, a figure of speech can clarify your ideas while adding interesting language to your story. Notice how figurative language makes each of these details easier to imagine. Click each detail to see how a writer used a figure of speech to explain it.
| wind turbines | lean white scarecrows, their arms flailing, but slowly |
| mustard gas | billowing forth like a fog possessed by ghosts |
| eye of a shark | a glass marble the size of your fist |
It's time to apply what you've learned in this lesson about making your word choices more precise and your details more sensory. Open the word processing document containing the draft of your short story. Then make these revisions to the draft before saving it and submitting the revised draft to your teacher. (Be sure to mark the changes in some way--with bold type or italics.)
- Change at least 10 words from general to more specific or precise. (For some of these 10, you can, instead, add more precise words to a sentence.)
- Add sensory details to at least two scenes in your short story.
- Add at least two figures of speech to your story, in places were readers may need help understanding what you are describing.
Don't forget to submit your revised draft to your teacher! (Click the Rubric button below to see how your story will be graded.)
