Bringing Your Words to Life

When I was fresh out of college, I enrolled in an Independent Study course. The class? The Novel. The assignment? Write a novel of at least 200 pages. Crazy? Yes, but I had always loved writing and I wanted the challenge.

As I wrote my novel I learned a few things about making mental images and ideas more appealing. I learned to be descriptive. We can bring our memories to life with the same technique. Descriptive text allows us to give a clean and clear picture of a memory. It takes our journaling from ordinary to engaging.

What are descriptive words? Descriptive words are words that give a more accurate and detailed picture. You can use verbs, adjectives or adverbs to tweak a simple statement and make it more interesting.

Verbs

• Instead of “We walked,” write “We skipped” or “We stepped.”
• Instead of “I saw,” write “I watched,” “I noticed” or “I stared.”
• Instead of “It was Christmas,” write “Christmas arrived.”

Adjective and Adverbs

• Instead of “He put on a hat,” write “He slipped on the wooly red hat.”
• Instead of “She loved the tree,” write “She loved the tall tree, covered with pine needles.”

Great journaling is a process. I always write my text down in one long narrative, getting the basics of what I want to say on paper. Then I go back to the initial text and add descriptive words. It is here that the words create a more visual picture of the event and my feelings.

Here’s a sample of text with basic journaling:

We went to Supercuts to get Jenny’s hair cut. Afterwards, they gave Jenny a balloon. She had lots of fun with the balloon. She threw it in the air and caught it over and over again. It was fun to watch Jenny because she had so much fun. It reminded me of how she has fun in whatever she does.

Revised Text:

Supercuts gave Jenny a balloon when she got her haircut. Jenny grabbed the balloon and threw it into the air. She caught it with two hands and spun around on her toes. Jenny danced with the balloon. She twisted, turned, leaped and walked on tiptoe around the room. Jenny’s joy with a simple toy like a balloon reminds me to have joy in small things.

Notice the differences? I spiced up the first sentence by using the verb “gave.” More descriptive verbs were added such as grabbed, twisted, turned, leaped, danced and giggled.

Do you need to use highly descriptive text all the time? Of course not. Just like a scrapbook page, you need balance. Some pages don’t need any text. Some pages need just a few words to tell the story. Others need more.

The next time you scrapbook an event, experience or feelings you really want to remember take a few minutes to revise your journaling with some descriptive words. When you go back to look at your scrapbooks years from now, you’ll be glad you did.

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