The Pen Commandments by Steven Frank

Author:Steven Frank
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307429155
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

I. Introduction. Establish the point of view (the dog), the tone (grumpy because demoted by the kid), and the context (birthdays). Notice that it’s okay to write the introduction in several short paragraphs instead of a single long one. Arrive at the location in the thesis sentence (the kitchen was a mess).

II. Pick one of the reader’s five senses and entertain it (the sense of sight). Use transition words of space to organize the description ( to the left of . . . on top of . . . on the floor, etc.) Use figurative language when possible (as though a blast of snow had come through an open window).

III. Entertain another sense (sound—the ticking and the DING of the timer).

IV. Another sense (smell—as the oven door opens). Notice that you don’t have to write for all five senses every time. (This essay leaves out the sense of taste, but by the end the reader knows the dog will enjoy her birthday feast.)

V. Transition toward conclusion (the soufflé is turning into a birthday cake).

VI. Conclusion. Bring back an idea from the introduction (the dog’s resentment toward the kid turns to affection). Give the reader a sense that the essay is finished (the dog bites off the candle tips) and that it’s okay to leave (dog is happy now).

The joy of writing from a point of view other than your own is like the joy of being an actor: you get to “play” many different parts, and each one widens your perspective and invites you to alter your voice. The basic facts of the description above are true. Sophie did urge us to make a birthday cake for our dog Lucy; my wife actually baked the strange concoction I described; and the kitchen really was a mess. (I had to clean it up.) But by writing the description from Lucy’s point of view, I forced myself to see the world as she sees it: curmudgeonly, a little left out, but finally grateful to have a human sibling with a big imagination and an equally big heart.

3. Description of a Face

His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.

—MARY SHELLEY, Frankenstein

“Reach in the bag and take a face, but don’t look at it ’til you sit down.” It is face-painting day in English class, and this is how I greet students as they file in. The faces they choose are not their own, and the materials they’ll use are not brushes and paint. The faces come from the glossy pages of magazines; the paint will come from their pens.

When they all have a face in hand, I tell them to study it. “Take notes on what you see.

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