The Sound of Your Writing

The following is based upon an exercise from Ursula K. Le Guin's Steering the Craft:

Le Guin claims that children have an appreciation for the "repetition and luscious word-sounds and the crunch and slither of onomatopoeia" that we outgrow as adults. She advises that "an awareness of what your own writing sounds like is an essential skill for a writer" and that the writer should feel free to "play with rhythms and sounds of the sentences" he or she writes.

Le Guin offers the following as examples of writers who play with rhythms and sounds in their writing:

• Susie Asado by Gertrude Stein
• How the Whale Got His Throat by Rudyard Kipling
• The seventh paragraph of The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain

Assignment: "Write a paragraph to a page (150-300 words) of a narrative that's meant to be read aloud. Use onomatopoeia, alliteration, repetition, rhythmic effects, made-up words or names, dialect — any kind of sounds-effect you like — but NOT rhyme or meter."