Every Word Matters, Revising Your Picture Book Manuscript Part C

Verbs: are they active, strong, and precise. Are they dull or over-used words?

Do they support the themes you are exploring?
Do they convey physical and emotional qualities?
Replace modifiers (adjective and adverse) with strong verbs that have physical and emotional meaning in addition to action. Example: he went home.
An adverb is needed to convey how he went home. He went home slowly, He went home quickly, He went home reluctantly.
A stronger verb would show both the how of the action and the emotion: he meandered home. He raced home. He trudged home.
Avoid narrations that distance reader from the character: he felt, she heard, they saw.
Example: He heard a cars crash. Use: car tires screeched.
Remove words that blunt the impact of the verb (wish-washy/tentative).
Example: he seemed to find the answer. Verses He found the answer. He discovered the answer.
Replace words that are active but over used or unexciting.
Example: have, run, come, go, see, look Vs: grip, dash, appear, vanish, spy, peek.

Nouns:

Are they stor5ng and precise?
Can adjectives be replaced with a strong noun?
Example: Sam’s friends thought he lived in a big, beautiful house. This doesn’t show the reader how big, or how beautiful, Sam’s house really is.
Vs: Sam lived in a castle, at least that’s what his friends thought. This gives the reader a specific point of reference, and shows the contrast between Sam and his friends.

Figurative4 & Descriptive Language:

Use to amplify meaning and give power to your words.
Simile: comparing two unlike things with ‘like’ or ‘as’
Outside, the ground is a blanket of rotting leaves.
Breaks up sentences to add to the rhythm
Stack them in the cellar like buried treasure.
The crystal rains fall,
Metaphor: Comparing two things that are not alike.
Example: snow falls in a blanked of diamonds
Hyperbole: exaggerated claims not to be taken literally.
Idiom: an expression that says one thing literally but means something else.
Personification: give human characteristics to a nonhuman.
Onomatopoeia: naming a word or acting by imitating the sounds associated with it.
Examples: the fourth however, continued to grow. And grow. Until he was the size of a teapot.
They were taught to yip. Never yap!
Yip. Yip
Ruff!
Kids love having fun things to say.
Alliteration: repetitive of two or more adjacent or closely connected words that begin with the same sound.