Word Hero

Sound Symbolism. The position of your mouth makes things seem big or small, significant or unimportant. Onomatopoeia. A sound effect that grew up and became a word. Sound Repeaters. Uses the same sound at the beginning, middle, or end of consecutive words.

Mad Lib Protocol. Take the key words in a favorite quote and “blank” them out with the relevant parts of speech: [noun] for The New Yorker, [verb] for edited. Now see if you can fill in blanks with relevant words of your own.

Unwriting. Take a quotation you love, and rewrite it in the plainest possible language. Then compare this simple version with the original. What’s the key difference that makes the quote work so well? If you look carefully, you should see the SPA within most memorable expressions: a sound, a picture, or an association. While sounds and pictures are

THE TOOLS

To steal a quote’s technique, unwrite it. Before you begin Mad Libbing, it helps to get a sense of what makes the words so great; and you’ll get insights into the occasions that suit the technique. By unwriting the Ross quote, we discovered that it would work well whenever we wanted to exclude a class of people. Unwriting also helps us discover the

Monosyllables make for great punch lines, because the choppy effect puts the stress on every word, increasing the audience’s focus on them.

three kinds of recording mechanisms hold words in the memory. Collectively, I call them the SPA: sounds, pictures, and associations.

The Pith Method. Write down what you want to say, then find the two or three key words that sum up your points. Use these words in a fabulous new sentence. You’ll see the pith method throughout the book as we use it to ready your thoughts for tools to come.

While you haven’t yet tried most of the tools, you can apply the pith method to come up with a pretty good line on your own. Boil down, and boil down some more, until you have two or three key words. Then use those words in a sentence.