Like the brushstrokes of a painting, words can transform the blank page into a multi-dimensional world. Word Painting combines direct instruction with intriguing word exercises to teach you how to "paint" evocative descriptions that capture the images of your mind's eye and improve your writing.Drawing on more than 25 years as an award-winning author, poet and teacher, Rebecca McClanahan defines effective description as three basic concepts--eye, word and story. Beginning with eye, you'll sharpen your sensory perceptions through exercises including note taking, journaling, sketching, eye searches--even "I searches." Moving forward to word, McClanahan shows you how to describe what you experience with clarity, accuracy and, above all, imagination. You'll learn to use action-based words, effective figures of speech and lively, musical language to develop a stronger descriptive style.In the story section, you'll learn that description can be a unifying force in your fiction, nonfiction or poetry. You'll link characters to setting, drama to point of view--and you'll gain control over your work's structure and pacing.Passages from classic and contemporary masters such as Gustave Flaubert, Virginia Woolf, Truman Capote and Toni Morrison offer you inspiring examples of description, and McClanahan also includes the advice of writers and poets from Aristotle to William Stafford.Like painting, description is an art form. With its provocative insight, instruction and exercises, Word Painting will help you elevate your writing craft to new levels of richness and clarity.

About the authorRebecca McClanahan has published stories, essays and poems in some of the finest literary journals in the country, including The Kenyon Review, Boulevard, The Georgia Review and The Gettysburg Review. She has published three books of poetry, most recently The Intersection of X and Y, as well as a book of lectures and readings, One Word Deep. In addition, her work has been anthologized in Pushcart Prize XVIII and The Best of American Poetry 1998. McClanahan has received the PEN/Syndicated Fiction Award, the J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize from Poetry, the Carter Prize for Nonfiction from Shenandoah, and a Governor's Award for Excellence in Education.