Being boring has always been one of my biggest fears. Especially with my writing.
This has led me to study writing techniques.
I wanted to understand how to keep learners engaged while helping them to reach their learning objectives. How to make the words sparkle, and engage?
My best discovery?
Well there’s sensory words, of course, and metaphors and storytelling.
But apart from these techniques?
The Winnie-the-Pooh technique.
It’s probably the simplest way to write with flair, and make your sentences shine brightly. Despite its cuddly name, this technique is suitable for any type of writing.
Shall I explain?
What is the Winnie-the-Pooh technique?
A lot of writing for learning is abstract as we can’t visualise it. There’s no life in it, and that’s rather dull.
So to make abstract sentences sparkle, we imagine what would happen if an abstract idea acted like a human.
Officially this is called personification.
But it’s also known as the Winne-the-Pooh technique because this much loved teddy bear walks, talks, thinks and drinks tea like a human. There’s life in this cuddly toy.
“I don’t feel very much like Pooh today” said Pooh
“There, there”, said Piglet. “I’ll bring you tea and honey until you do.”
The Winnie-the-Pooh technique helps add a dash of fun or a sense of poetry to your writing, if your writing for learning.
Let’s see how this works.
Examples of Personification in Writing
In her book “Wilding: The return of nature to a British Farm”, Isabelle Tree describes what happens when farmland is left to re-wild after years of intensive agriculture:
“The land, released from its cycle of drudgery, seemed to be breathing a sigh of relief. And as the land relaxed, so did we.”
Of course land is not human, it can’t breathe a sigh of relief and it doesn’t relax, but we understand perfectly what Tree means and the personification adds a sense of poetry to the writing.
Here is an example from a training manual for operatives of a paper bag making machine:
“The knives in the folding section of the machine are very sharp. They have no brains and cannot tell the difference between paper and human fingers. Therefore, all safety precautions must be observed when clearing paper jams.:
Crazy, eh? Of course the knives do not have brains. They are not human.
Examples of personification for abstract concepts.
A sentence is an abstract concept, it can’t scream, smile or whisper. Yet, Joe Moran writes in his book “First you Write a Sentence” that sentence can holler, even before they’re written down.”
“Some writers claim to have sentences in their heads hollering to get out.”
Sentences also can’t jump, dance or run. Yet Moran describes a bad sentence like this:
The sentence just limps and wheezes along to its sad end with a tuneless clank”
A sentence doesn’t have a human body that can be caressed, injured, or wounded. Yet, Moran bandages up a broken sentence:
“And all the time I knew that fixing a broken sentence is about so much more than just bandaging it up.”
In the sentences above, the verbs nudge the abstract ideas to come alive – to holler, limp and wheeze.
So, when a sentence or paragraph feels a little dull to you, look at the verb you’ve used. And then consider: If you’d write about a human instead, how would that human act?