A to Z Challenge - ORWELL'S THIRD LAW - G is for great minds

GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE
Thinking alike is the chief ingredient in
poor decision making.

The image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy ~  Ezra Pound

Descriptions cannot copied, cut and pasted straight out of the pages of the Lonely Planet's travel guide or Wikipedia. Imagery adds texture and a vivid-brilliance to writing.
For the Blogging from A to Z  Challenge I am posting idioms, proverbs and examples of figurative language.

George Orwell says: 

WHEN WRITING A SENTENCE YOU SHOULD ALWAYS ASK YOURSELF:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?


From Stephenie Meyer's Twilight:


I struggled violently, with total futility.
     Alice spoke for the first time. "Edward, pull over."
     He flashed her a hard look, and then sped up.
     "Edward, let's just talk this through."
     "You don't understand," he roared in frustration. I'd never heard his voice so loud; it was deafening in the confines of the Jeep. The speedometer neared one hundred and fifteen. "He's a tracker, Alice, did you see that? He's a tracker!"
     I felt Emmett stiffen next to me, and I wondered at his reaction to the word. It meant something more to the three of them than it did to me; I wanted to understand, but there was no opening for me to ask.


I wanted to quote from Stephenie Meyer's Midnight Sun draft but it didn't seem right to take advantage of the POV experiment she wrote to help Robert Pattinson get into the role. The section where the Cullen's debate how they should deal with the situation, when Bella remains suspicious of Edward after he saved her life, is a favourite.


Morgan flavoured the atmosphere with subtle pheromones and auto-response suggestions until The Council of Six weren't like minded, they were his.


Great. The boys didn't step any closer as they moved from group to crowd to gang but when primitive urging replaced any kind of debate I could tell what they were going to do about me. 


Buhll broke at least one bone in the sentinel's foot when the guard tried to stop him. His insubordination broke more than that. "I'd heard that great minds think alike. It seems that you've perfected that skill, none of you have an original thought in your heads."


WHAT IS THE CHIEF INGREDIENT IN A NOVEL?

A to Z Challenge - ORWELL's THIRD LAW - F is for Failure

FAILURE IS THE MOTHER OF SUCCESS
Action is its father and
ideas, improvement and persistence
are siblings.

Orwell's Third Law of sentence construction deals with idioms, proverbs and figurative language.

This April, for the Blogging from A to Z Challenge, I am posting examples of figurative language.

George Orwell says: 

WHEN WRITING A SENTENCE YOU SHOULD ALWAYS ASK YOURSELF:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?


From Becca Fitzpatrick's hush, hush


     We were plunging. The flashing lights along the tracks blinded me; I couldn't see which way the track turned at the end of the dive.
     It was too late. The car swerved to the right. I felt a jolt of panic, and then it happened. My left shoulder slammed against the car door. It flung open, and I was ripped out of the car while the rollercoaster sped off without me. I rolled onto the tracks and grappled for something to anchor myself. My hands found nothing, and I  tumbled over the edge, plunging straight down through the black air. The ground rushed up at me, and I opened my mouth to scream.
     The next thing I knew, the ride screeched to a stop at the unloading platform.


For anyone who hasn't read this book yet there is a success and a failure of sorts in that section ;)


     "Hold on to your horses and corral your cat! Why, I'd say that starting at Potential, and fuelled by self-belief an' a healthy dose of action, failure ain't nothin' more than a waylay station on the road to Success."
     I was beginning to think Gramps had lost his ma...p. "Right." 


Flat on his back, with Lyon's foot on his chest, his position looked a lot like failure but Byng liked to think he was one defeat closer to victory.


Amy's failures stung like hail and they left behind a bitter cold that dampened her spirits and sent chills through her battered determination.


THIS APRIL, ARE YOU FEELING THE GLOW OF SUCCESS OR IS FAILURE CHILLING YOU?

A to Z Challenge - ORWELL'S THIRD LAW - E is for Easy

EASY AS PIE
Even with a calculator, or an old slide rule,
I could never get the ingredients
to add up to pie.

This April, for the Blogging from A to Z  Challenge, I am posting idioms, proverbs and examples of figurative language in accordance with Orwell's Third Law of sentence construction. ;) 

George Orwell says: 

WHEN WRITING A SENTENCE YOU SHOULD ALWAYS ASK YOURSELF:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?


From Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl's Beautiful Creatures:


Fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, string beans and biscuits - all sitting angry, congealed and cold on the stove where Amma had left them. Usually, she kept my dinner warm for me until I got home from practice, but not today. I was in a lot of trouble.




Scratch and sniff novels are never going to work, authors need to craft sensational imagery:


Sweet but oh-so red, poor Zannah made a juicy filling for her cream puff dress.


Fly-light flour dusted every surface in the kitchen and the finger-sticking margarine wouldn't leave my hands alone, but just let it wait until I got to the rolling pin stage: I was going to teach that pastry a lesson.


Hunting down the car thief was as easy as pie: Wegman's, aisle two, second fridge, you couldn't miss them.




CAN YOU NAME A CHARACTER, IN A MOVIE OR IN LITERATURE, WHO LOVED TO COOK?

A to Z Challenge - ORWELL'S THIRD LAW - D is for Dead

DEAD AS A DOORNAIL
If it's hard and cold, if it grips at
your fingers and
bites at your skin in the frost,
is it really dead?

By using idioms, proverbs and figurative language writers can add levels of emotional and social context in a few well chosen words.


 I am Blogging from A to Z in accordance with Orwell's Third Law of sentence construction. ;)

George Orwell says: 

WHEN WRITING A SENTENCE YOU SHOULD ALWAYS ASK YOURSELF:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?

From Charles Dicken's A CHRISTMAS CAROL 

“Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail.”

Dead. Images don't come more serious or more permanent than dead. 

Our relationship was dead and all that was left was a preserved image, a perfect fossil of how things used to be.


Dead was diamond hard, the incomprehensible end of a transparent process.

As dead as a furred impression in tarmac.

HOW ARE YOUR BLOGPOSTS SHAPING UP? TELL ME, WHAT'S YOUR NUMBER? ;)

A to Z Challenge - ORWELL'S THIRD LAW - C is for Curiosity

CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT
Predictable responses, should
always be avoided.

I'm Blogging from A to Z .

I am posting idioms, proverbs and examples of figurative language in accordance with Orwell's Third Law of sentence construction. ;) 

George Orwell says: 

WHEN WRITING A SENTENCE YOU SHOULD ALWAYS ASK YOURSELF:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?

Last night, A Game of Thrones season 2 aired in the UK. While I was counting down, I re-read books one and two of the epic saga A Song of Ice and Fire.


From George RR Martin's A GAME OF THRONES


The Red Keep was full of cats: lazy cats dozing in the sun, cold-eyed mousers twitching their tails, quick little kittens with claws like needles, ladies' cats all combed and trusting , ragged shadows prowling the midden heaps. One by one, Arya had chased them down and snatched them up and brought them proudly to Syrio Forel... all but this one, this one-eared black devil of a tomcat. "That's the real king of this castle right there," one of the gold cloaks had told her. "Older than sin and twice as mean."


I loved running through the castle with Arya as she tried to develop the skills that would allow her to sneak up on and to catch that cat.


IMAGERY HAS BEEN DONE MANY TIMES BEFORE SO IT NEEDS TO BE FACTUAL, FRESH OR FUNNY:


The grey cat was gone before the rub of sleeve against coat sparked, static was not his style.


Intent on stealing home, the stray cat slid in and raked Fancy's underbelly with its powerful back legs.


They say that everyone can identify with at least one of the characters in The Song of Ice and Fire. This is one reason why the books are so successful. I identify with Arya, younger daughter of Eddard Stark, the Lord of Winterfell.


WHICH CHARACTER, IN THIS BOOK, OR ANY OTHER, DO YOU IDENTIFY WITH?

A to Z Challenge - ORWELL'S THIRD LAW - B is for Beauty

BEAUTY IS ONLY SKIN DEEP
But, which skin and how deep?

Like half the blogging writers on the planet, this April I'm Blogging from A to Z   ;)

In accordance with Orwell's Third Law of sentence construction. ;) I am posting idioms, proverbs and examples of figurative language.

George Orwell says: 

WHEN WRITING A SENTENCE YOU SHOULD ALWAYS ASK YOURSELF:

1. What am I trying to say?

2. What words will express it?

3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?


As the weather here has been changing from summer warm to winter chill over the last week, I have been drawn back to re-reading Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver and Linger. 


In these novels anyone infected by the werewolf virus remains in wolf-form through the winter, and in their human form in the summer. Spring and autumn are dangerous times if a new werewolf cannot predict when the change might overtake them.


Sam was very young when he was infected and he changed for the first time.


From Maggie Stievater's LINGER


I remember one spring, when I was nine and still relatively uncertain in my wolf skin, the warm day had stripped my pelt from me and left me naked and embarrassed, curled on the forest floor like a pale new shoot.

ORWELL'S FOURTH LAW MUST APPLY TO ANY IMAGERY TOO:


4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?


Spring tempted green buds to peer from their protective soil only to snap at them with sudden frosts.


In cruel spring, the shy shoots emerge from the deep out into intense glares and frosty treatment.


Strong verbs beat at the heart of great imagery.


WOULD YOU LIKE TO SHARE A SPRING VERB? 


Spring kindles...    Spring hikes...

A to Z Challenge - ORWELL'S THIRD LAW - A is for actions

ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER
THAN WORDS
intent and motive
are action's
shadows

The Blogging from A to Z   Challenge is up and running again thanks to Arlee Bird and to everyone else who is helping him co-ordinate the massive blogfest.

This April, I am posting in accordance with Orwell's Third Law of sentence construction. ;)

George Orwell says: 

WHEN WRITING A SENTENCE YOU SHOULD ALWAYS ASK YOURSELF:

1. What am I trying to say?

2. What words will express it?

3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?

The word idiom has both Latin and Greek origins. In either language idiom means something special or a special phrasing of one's own. The key to images and idioms is they should make the meaning clearer and they should be one's own and so fresh, unique and true to the setting of the story.

Images or idioms can be used to add historical context, emotional depth or meanings beyond the literal.

Sometimes the idiom or image can be used to reveal a truth that may not be obvious to the character or to the reader.

From HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE

"Draco, do it, or stand aside so one of us -" screeched the woman, but at that precise moment the door to the ramparts burst open once more and there stood Snape, his wand clutched in his hand as his black eyes swept the scene, from Dumbledore slumped against the wall, to the four Death Eaters, including the enraged werewolf, and Malfoy.

The readers knew Harry's broom was leaning against the wall too, most of us who were following along in Harry's POV forgot that even when JK provided us with this little reminder.

Intent and motive are the shadows behind every action, when actions speak louder than words.

DO YOU HAVE A THEME FOR YOUR A TO Z CHALLENGE POSTS?