Post #118 – Women’s Memoirs, Writing Prompt – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
Using Words in Memoir Writing
If you’re like I am, you fuss a lot with words when you write. In addition to choosing precise words, you may try to not repeat the same word over and over. You probably have a thesaurus nearby or can quickly get to an online version. That always helps us find a similar word to avoid the repetition problem.
Today, however, I’d like to pick up the other end of the stick and turn this into a writing prompt. But first a little background.
As you know from previous Memoir Writing Prompts, I’m a fan of Southwest Airlines’ Spirit magazine. This summer, I read in their July issue that Dr. Seuss used only 50 different words in his bestselling book Green Eggs and Ham. (Right there he has already used up four words.)
Why so few? Dr. Seuss (whose real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel) wrote The Cat in the Hat using only 236 words from a list of 348 words that William Ellsworth Spaulding, Houghton Mifflin’s director of education, determined were important for first-graders. He challenged Geisel, a masterful storyteller, to write a book that would use no more than 250 of these words. [click to continue…]
{ 0 comments }
