Putting that Literary Touch on Your Writing Writing can be enhanced by a turn of phrase—a sentence or expression that is artful. Here are three basic ways you can put a literary touch in your writing. PERSONIFICATION Personification is a form of figurative language. It gives an inanimate object a human trait. Here are a few examples. "Then the wind increased, joined by large pelts of rain, the mid-morning having made up its mind to be rainy." "I sometimes think my car hates me." "I’m convinced the eyes in the painting were following me." Obviously, wind cannot make up its mind, a car cannot hate you, and the eyes in a painting, though it might seem like they are following you, are not. We are simply ascribing human attributes to inanimate objects. OBJECTIFICATION This is the reverse of personification. You objectify when you give a human the characteristics of an inanimate object. Here are some possible ways to do it: "A pair of tiny
Pat Robertson is taking it on the chin again. Seems each time he opines on why bad things happen to us, there is someone to call him on it. Most recently, Dr. Richard Mouw has taken up the challenge in response to Robertson's recent statement on the Las Vegas shooting, in which at least 59 people were killed and more than 500 were wounded in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. In a piece, titled, " You've Been Warned, PatRobertson! " Mouw, for whom I have deep respect, pens, "It didn’t take long for some preachers to start telling us why God caused the horrible mass murder in Las Vegas to happen. Pat Robertson led the way, declaring that it was divine retribution for the widespread 'disrespect' for Donald Trump in America." If Robertson had limited his rationale for the Vegas shooting to God punishing us for people dissing the President, I'd be smacking him on the chin myself. But he didn't. Robertson'