Part I: Personification

What's personification? An easy tool to make your setting really POP! Read on to find out how to use it!

Have you ever written a paragraph of a story you were working on, read it back, and grumbled at how plain, uninspiring, or boring it was? Well, we all have. Even if you’ve got ideas in your head, as great as they might sound inside, sometimes you’ll put them on the screen and completely disappoint yourself. What sounded like an exciting, action packed scene in your mind now looks like a trudging block of exposition. It’s boring.

Don't let your exposition stay looking like this!

    Well don’t let it get you down. It’s just something that’s going to happen when you’re pounding your thoughts into material. Quite often, even if what you just wrote looks terrible to you, it’s still a vital step in the creative process. It’s extremely important to put your thoughts down in written form. So many “writers” have the story all in their heads! It might be amazing and inspiring and wonderful, but no one can see it. That’s why actually filtering the ideas out of your mind into visible form is so important, but it’s of course only the first step.

    Let’s go back to that boring block of exposition. Odds are that you’re going to have to dissect it, chop it up, sew it back together, and send a bolt of lightning into it before “It’s alive!” Silly, but truer than you think. Quite often you will have to remove entire sections of writing, even if your productive ego tells you “What are you doing!?” It just feel unnatural and wrong to delete something you put in your story, but trust me, don’t be afraid of it. Often less is far more, and there’s only one way to find out when that’s true.

    But that still doesn’t say much for energizing that dead chunk of text. If you chop up paragraph cadavers and splice them back together, you’re still using dead word-meat. What do you need next? A bolt of lightning! But where do you find that? Well, there are many viable alternatives to a lightning rod affixed to your roof. Writing is an art, and just as there are a myriad different ways to bring a painting to life, the same can be said when it comes to writing. I’m going to bring out one that I personally like to employ in my work.

    Personification. What’s that? Well, basically it’s when you take an lifeless, inanimate object, and give it active, even human traits. If you cut eyes and a mouth into your sandwich and make it talk, I suppose that’s personification. Thankfully we can be much more subtle when it comes to writing. How can we do this? Well the best way to explain is with an example.

The wind moved the curtains.

This sentence of exposition is to the point, but it’s also pretty boring. I think I just yawned.

The blackened night exhaled a heavy breath against the curtains as they fluttered in a ghostly dance.

Alright, I’ll admit I went a little overboard there, but this looks a lot better, doesn’t it?

    Looking at those two sentences, why is the second one funner to read? It’s hardly because of the dramatic descriptive adjectives. Don’t believe me? Then let’s strip it bare, leaving only the personifications.

The night exhaled a breath against the curtains as they fluttered and danced.

    It still sounds pretty darn good, doesn’t it? Some would even prefer this version to the last. Why? Well that’s a key point when it comes to personification. A writer can pile on all the fancy adjectives he wants onto his work, but when you overuse adjectives, you’re telling the reader what something is like, you’re not showing them what it’s like. That’s probably the most widely preached mantra of writing: Show, don’t tell.

Maybe this is a bit too literal of a visual aid, but I kind of want middle one's number and to have a brewski with the one on the left.

    When you utilize a personification as opposed to a handful of adjectives, you’re giving your setting human characteristics. Obviously, any human is going to more fully connect with human characteristics. It hits home harder, and it wraps us up in the scene. You see? That’s a personification right there “It wraps us into to the scene”. Obviously a sentence or paragraph cannot physically wrap around your body, but through use of a personification, your mind immediately grasps the idea behind that phrase and interprets it in a very literal, visceral way. That’s why personifications are so powerful when read. You might not even see them as you read, but they’re there, and they make you keep reading.

    So now that you understand exactly what personification is, why don’t you try it out? I guarantee that you already use it in your writing, even if you never thought about it before, but now that we are thinking about it, let’s practice and evolve this particular skill.

    Below is a list of random, lifeless objects. They’re lifeless because they’re not breathing and thinking, but you personally can breathe life into them through personification, and they will repay the favor by breathing life into your story.

Wind
Marble/s
Camera
Dress
Xylophone

    So take each of these boring, inanimate objects, and use personification to place them each in a sentence that imbues them with life and human characteristics. Remember to make good use of active verbs, not passive ones (like were, had, and was), and for a twist, try to use little to no adjectives in each sentence. Don’t be afraid of using emotion! Just because a mansion can not feel literal sorrow, it can look very sad and alone as it sits atop a dark, cloudy mountaintop, right?

    Post your practice results in the comments section and let me know how personification works for you!

Comments

Panda

Posted 11 Years Ago The wind screeched a banshee wail, as the storm began to pick up pace. His eyes looked like two small marbles, glistening and swirling with color, as his stoned face looked at my sober one. Her long dress looked like a waterfall as it cascaded down her tall slim figure.

Donovan Simpson

Posted 11 Years Ago The wind picked her up and driffted her into my arms because my words did't hit her feelings

redthai

Posted 11 Years Ago The wind howl loudy around the still dark house The gusty wind whip her flaring skirt reveling long smooth legs and plain white cotton pantyies. Bracing himself against the damp forcing wind he called out her name again. the red dress cut away waist deep in her slendar muscled back reveling plum dark satin smooth skin.

Paradox Heiress

Posted 11 Years Ago I enter my grandmothers' dreary basement , it's seem peaceful like she was as slims of light enter. The wind blustering the lifeless curtains into a shadowy dance. I see an old rusty camera with broken lens turned into a dangerous nest for a small squirrel. To my left I see an old xylophone with most of the color faded off and a dress old and also faded. Finally I see a bag of broken marbles I wonder what broke them.

Megan

Posted 11 Years Ago The wind whipped across campus with such spirit, playing with the trees and young girls' hair. It danced around us, more excited than the freshman that it was time for class again. I couldn't control my anger. I shook the old desk violently until with a carelessness I gave it one last shove into the wall. It fell over dizzily, back on all four legs. My ears flinched with the unexpected smack of a single marble hitting the hardwood floor. Gliding so smoothly and fast, it rolled straight toward me until it abruptly stopped against my boot. It was so tiny, with swirls of blue, like a child pulling on my pant leg innocently wondering why I was so upset. (camera is too long to post lol) It hung against my closet door like a ghost. There she was. 'You are a monumental piece of fabric,' i thought to myself as i sat humbly, indian-style on the floor before her. She looked down at me, batting her wonderful eyes, speaking so elegantly, "You are beautiful darling and you're going to be very happy." Such a playful little thing. I remember the mallets, with balls of yarn. And the silver bars that chimed with delight and serenaded my childhood.

EternityWolf101

Posted 11 Years Ago "The camera blinked as I pressed on the snapshot button, aiming it directly at the marbles I placed at the edge of my bed. When the picture was taken, the marbles suddenly cried as they fell to the floor in a giant heap, bouncing off the wooden floor and springing themselves up. It looked like they were begging me to put them back on the bed. I picked them all up and, after some thinking, put them in the center of the bed this time. I smiled as I looked at the picture. It wasn't what i planned, but it looked interesting. the picture was of them falling to the floor. they were all in a line, almost like they were marching. A knock. I looked behind me to only find my window open, slamming itself slowly into the outside wall of the house from the force of the heavy wind. As I approached the window, a silent growl came from outside. it was like the wind was mad at me, but for what? Why is the wind mad at me? I stood still for a few moments, then ran to the window, slamming it shut and locking the bolts. Nothing. No noise. No movements. All I saw was myself in the reflection, but.... I was filthy. Blood was staining my once lively colored dress, staining its ego with death. I rubbed my eyes and it was gone. The colors were back to normal. I sighed. Only an illusion. I looked back to the marbles. They were still there. I smiled and picked them back up in one of my hands. With the other, I pulled out the xylophone box I crafted for them and dropped them inside. I knew the xylophone would keep them safe." Wow.... how only a few words can create a story.... it just baffles me.

Siena - Silent Awakenin..

Posted 11 Years Ago I fed the camera through my love of art, and it captured my life as it loved doing... I in return, kept it safe... Those terrible sounds would altur its pace, higher than lower... the wind was silently growling at me. I looked through and into the mirror, 'I love it!' I now glancing back to my mother who had decided to kneel, my dress then smiling back at me, from the corner of my eye. He always loved his marbles, from the very first day of his 10th birthday 1987. They kept him campany and on days when silence would errupt, I heard them talking to him... above the landning, alone, quietly in his room.

rjrhodes

Posted 12 Years Ago The strong wind choked my lungs as it accosted my face. The forgotten bag of marbles hidden under the bed sadly remembered times past of joyous games. The dress danced across her body as she strode with confidence into the main hall. The xylophone became the unlikely guest star of the orchestra as it sang out its clear melody.

DJ Adamczyk

Posted 12 Years Ago I listened as the breeze sang me a chilling tune as it creaked through the worn wooden shutter. Clicks and clacks chimed after one another as the marbles collided into one another. The "dashcam" from the officer's car was the number one witness who had helped serve justice. The dress mimicked every move she made as we danced at the local latin club. The xylophone had seduced the crowd into awe during it's solo.

SheActsLikeSummer

Posted 12 Years Ago I'm just going to ignore the comment below and tell you that: The wind whispers unspoken secrets. Marbles race down the stairs unaware of what will greet them at the bottom. The camera takes the picture, storing it inside its mind for future reference. The dress picks up its feet in the wind, twirling through the sky, landing with a gasp in the water below. It (the xylophone) sings to me, each note carefully enunciated, clear in its lungs. These aren't the best, but whatever. :P

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