An Attempt At ‘Poetic Prose’…

A life-long avid reader, I have often marvelled at some writers’ ability to (seemingly) effortlessly use ‘poetic prose’ to enrich descriptions in their novels.

Diana Gabaldon, author of the award-winning, #1 New York Times-bestselling novels, described the arrival of dawn with such eloquence in her sixth instalment of Outlander series of novels, ‘A Breath of Snow and Ashes’.

It was full dark, but the air had the still, inward feel of the small hours; the world holding its breath, before dawn comes on a rising wind.
~ “The Eighteenth of April”
Copyright © 2005 Diana Gabaldon

Simply by stringing together a few words, my niece (and a fellow aspiring writer working on several WIPs simultaneously) could evoke a thought-provoking sentence

There is beauty in darkness, just as there is horror in the light.

or blend the glitz and glamour of a metropolitan city with old-age imperialism.

Skyscrapers standing sentry as the pavement cracks whisper secrets into the minds of men.

In her novel ‘The Pact’, Jodi Picoult aptly used the below analogy to describe a teenager’s belief on how adults perceived adolescence.

Adults, light-years away from this, rolled their eyes and smirked and said, “this too shall pass” – as if adolescence was a disease like chicken pox, something everyone recalled as a mild nuisance, completely forgetting how painful it had been at the time.
Quote copied from Goodreads

A lover of diction and linguist (I swear, in another life, I could/should have majored in English Literature!), I have always drawn the line at poetry. Not because I don’t enjoy them, but because I simply lack the patience and skill to interpret the meaning behind such succinct proses. Attempting to write poetry purely to fulfil the requirement of high school English class assignments, I quickly realised how much I sucked at rhyming.

That was, until I decided to delve into the literary world, and:

a) Experienced first-hand how a beautifully well-constructed sentence or paragraph could tug at your heart strings and send your emotions into its own unique, spinning roller-coaster ride;

b) Recognised the benefits of prose as an alternative, sometimes more effective way to depict a story; to further apply the ‘show, don’t tell’ type of writing to engage each and every one of your senses.

Still, figurative language doesn’t come easily or naturally to me. In the sea of metaphors, similes, and symbolisms, I would say analogies and personifications are the ones I have frequently used; my constant go-tos for my novel-writing purposes.

Imagine my surprise when, more-than-knee-deep immersed in my novels, a wave of figurative language surged through me; so rare, I had the strongest urge to celebrate, and share.

Read Shield and Armor, a short excerpt from Price of Admission.