FUN WITH WORDS

Guest Post by Madelyn Rosenberg

My recent middle-grade novel, Canary in the Coal Mine, is about a small bird who busts out of the mines in West Virginia and tries to make things better for those he leaves behind. It’s set in 1931. When I was researching the novel, I spent a lot of time figuring out what people ate back then, what music they listened to, and how much things cost (thank you old Sunday newspapers). And then, after the copyeditor flagged a few of them, I learned to research something else: words.

I’d tried to take care, as I always do, in choosing just the right words for my story. I’d even consulted a linguistics magazine that listed common West Virginia expressions of the 1920s. But the copyeditor still highlighted a few words that wouldn’t have come into common usage until after my time period. “Gobbledygook,” for example, didn’t reach the dictionary until the early 1940s. “Motion sickness” had a similar date of origin. I’ve had motion sickness my entire life, and it never occurred to me that before 1940, people just felt dizzy and sick to their stomachs.

It usually takes a few years for a word to make it from common usage into the dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary just recently added the term “bucket list,” but I’ll bet you’ve heard that term before.

The origin of a word is known as its etymology (a word that dates back to the 1300s).

For today’s Pencil Tips activities:

*Think of a word that makes you curious. Then go look it up in the dictionary. Far beneath the definition, or whether it’s a noun or a verb, you will see “origin” and a date. How far does your word go back? Does the dictionary tell you anything else about your word’s origin?

*Invent a word of your own, like Nick Allen did in Andrew Clements’ Frindle.  http://andrewclements.com/books-frindle.html  Maybe you’ll invent a word that describes the way you feel when you slam your funny bone against the kitchen table, or a word for a mosquito bite that keeps itching even after you put on Calamine lotion. Share your words in class.

*Play a game of Fictionary. This is a favorite in my family because everyone ends up laughing. I’ve found it works best in groups of five or six.

Rules:

Grab a dictionary. Call out words until you find one where no one knows the definition. Have each player make up a definition that sounds like a dictionary definition, while you write the real definition on a piece of paper.

Read the definitions one at a time. Have the other players guess which one they think is real.

If the correct definition is guessed, the player guessing gets a point.

If a made-up definition is guessed, the player who wrote the definition scores a point.

If no one gets the correct definition, the player who chose the word gets three points. You can restructure the scoring however you’d like; we often play with no scoring at all, but for bragging rights, as in: “Daddy really believed ‘hurkle’ was a species of fish.”

Pass the dictionary to the left for another round.

If you’re interested in more information about how a word makes its way into the dictionary, check out this link to the Oxford English Dictionary http://public.oed.com/

and this handy FAQ from Merriam-Webster: http://www.merriam-webster.com/help/faq/words_in.htm

BIO: Madelyn Rosenberg is the author of two picture books, Happy Birthday, Tree which was on the Bank Street best-of list and The Schmutzy Family, a Sydney Taylor Notable Book and a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Her first middle-grade novel, Canary in the Coal Mine, was chosen to represent West Virginia in the States Pavilion at the 2013 National Book Festival. Madelyn is also the author of two forthcoming books: Dream Boy, a YA novel co-written with Mary Crockett, due out in July 2014 and How to Behave at a Tea Party, a picture book due out in fall 2014. To learn more about Madelyn and her books, please visit http://www.madelynrosenberg.com/.

PENCIL TIPS WRITING WORKSHOP: PLAYING WITH WORDS

by Laura Krauss Melmed 

Debbie Levy, author of The Year of Goodbyes (Disney-Hyperion 2010) and Maybe I’ll Sleep in the Bathtub Tonight and Other Funny Bedtime Poems (Sterling 2010) recently encouraged aspiring authors “to play when writing.  If a stream of words is running through your mind, you don’t have to channel it into something with a defined structure right away; get the words on paper (or on the screen) and see where they seem to want to go…whether writing fiction or nonfiction, consider using different formats and points of view.  There’s no one correct way to shape a piece of writing!”

Many books and on-line sources present games designed to stimulate creativity and jump start the process of playing with words.  It is also fun to come up with your own exercises.  Here for starters are several suggestions:

Play with Cut-outs:  Cut out pictures from online or hard copy magazines and newspapers, of subjects that you find compelling, and scatter them on the floor. Then, look out the window or at a blank wall for the time it takes to count ten breaths. Next, look down and pick a picture--do it quickly without giving yourself time to think. Put that picture on a mosaic board. Look at the pattern you've made from those pictures. What sort of mood do they evoke? What narrative do they bring into focus?  Write a narrative weaving together the pictures you’ve selected. (Based on a tip from www.editingoffice.com)

Play Story Tennis (requires a partner): One of you writes a few paragraphs of a story. It can be about anything. You then pass it on to your writing partner (email is perfect for this) who then writes the next paragraph and so on and so on. (From the “One of Us” creative writing website http://www.oneofus.co.uk/index.php/writing_tips/writing_exercises/)

Play Doubles: To minimize the waiting time when Story Tennis is being played face-to-face, and for a real right and left brain challenge, how about having two stories going at once and using a timer to signal when to switch with your partner?

Play with Magic: For my picture book, Prince Nautilus, I imagined the consequences of a girl finding a magic seashell on the beach.  Along these lines, author and artist Keri Smith, in How to Be An Explorer of the World, Penguin Group, 20008, suggests assembling a box of small objects (for example, a feather, a key, a mitten, a small figurine and a pinecone).  Each student selects an object, ascribes a magic power to it, and writes about it. 

Play with Dialogue: Alternatively, I might ask students to select two objects from the box and then write a dialogue between them.

Play with Poetry: Write a poem that incorporates all of the objects.

Lastly, here are two exercises based on games described in a YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaO7TYQJXqc by Jamie Cat Callen, author of The Writer’s Toolbox:

Play Pick-up Sticks: Write a bunch of interesting sentences on Popsicle sticks.  For example, “No one knew how the cat with six toes got out of our house every night, but there he sat on the doorstop each morning, as regular as clock-work” or, “The ruby slippers were a little big on Darcy, but the minute she put them on, her heels began to click together involuntarily.”  Have students line up the sticks randomly face down and then select three sticks.  They must use all three sentences in a story.

Play Cards: To prepare, start with a stack of index cards of three different colors, say blue, green and yellow.  On each blue card, write a description of a protagonist.  On each green card write a description of a goal.  On each yellow card, write an obstacle.  Make all of these as wildly diverse as you can.  To play, each student picks a card blindly from each pile and then writes a story based on the selected protagonist, goal, and obstacle.

Remember when using these or similar exercises that the object is not to produce a polished piece of writing, but rather to follow where your words take you.  Above all, playing with words should be fun!

http://www.laurakraussmelmed.com/books.htm