• ____ Strong Adjective – use the thesaurus to find at least one dazzling and appropriate adjective for every section  (or page) of your essay
  • ____Strong Adverb – use the thesaurus to find at least one beguiling and appropriate adjective for every section (or page)  of your essay
  • ____Hunt for “There was” and “There were” and substitute with strong verbs like “towered” or “trembled”.  

“There was a mountain in the distance” could become, “A mountain towered in the distance.”

“There was an ugly house,” could become, “An ugly house squatted in the yard.”

  • ____Join sentences sometimes:  Use words like  which, who, where, although, so, or because to JOIN some sentences and make your language structure more varied and pleasurable to read. 
  • ____Write one VSS (very short sentence) – this technique allows for drama!  

“Jay wanted to buy his dream bike.  He didn’t.”   or

“Cara pedaled her puny bike all the way to the top of the monstrous mountain.  She found nothing.”

  • ____ Stop for Red Lights!  You can use red light words, but you need to stop and google first. These words signal your chance to do a little better!!!
  • Red light words : go, went, come, came, say, said, get, got, see, or saw, good, bad, nice, mean, pretty, ugly, big, or a lot. 

These red light words are triggers for you to go careen/ race/ hurry/ rush straight to the thesaurus and find a stronger flashier or more suitable word.  “The ugly house squatted in front of us.” Could become: “The menacing house squatted in the yard.”  (Oh how far you’ve come from that first sentence: “There was an ugly house”