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Explore how giving human traits to objects and using fun exaggerations can add personality to your stories.
Have you ever heard a teapot 'whistle' or felt like your backpack weighed a million pounds? Words can do more than just tell a story—they can make it come alive!
Personification is a special tool writers use to give human qualities to things that aren't human. Think about your favorite cartoons: a talking car or a singing teapot. In writing, we do this by giving objects actions, feelings, or traits that only people usually have. For example, instead of saying 'the wind blew,' you could say 'the wind whispered through the trees.' This makes the reader feel like the wind has a secret to tell! It helps us connect with the world around us in a more emotional and exciting way.
Let's turn a plain sentence into personification: 1. Start with a plain sentence: 'The alarm clock went off.' 2. Think of a human action: 'Screaming' or 'Yelling.' 3. Combine them: 'The alarm clock screamed at me to wake up!' 4. Now the clock seems grumpy, just like a person might be in the morning!
Quick Check
If I say 'The flowers danced in the breeze,' what human action are the flowers doing?
Answer
The flowers are dancing.
Hyperbole (pronounced hy-PER-bo-lee) is a huge, silly exaggeration. It is not meant to be true! We use it to emphasize a point or show a big feeling. If you say, 'I'm so hungry I could eat a horse,' you don't actually want to eat a horse. You are just using a giant exaggeration to show that you are really hungry. Hyperbole adds humor and energy to your writing. It's like using a giant highlighter on your feelings so the reader can't miss them.
How to create a hyperbole for being bored: 1. Identify the feeling: Boredom. 2. Think of something that takes a very long time: years. 3. Create the sentence: 'This movie is taking a billion years to finish!' 4. The reader now knows exactly how bored you feel because of that huge number.
Quick Check
Is the sentence 'I have a ton of homework' a hyperbole? Why?
Answer
Yes, because a 'ton' is pounds, and paper doesn't actually weigh that much.
One of the best ways to practice these tools is by describing the weather. Weather is always moving and changing, which makes it perfect for personification. Instead of saying it is 'sunny,' you can say 'the sun smiled down on the park.' Instead of saying it is 'thundering,' you can say 'the sky grumbled with anger.' By giving the weather a personality, you make your description much more interesting for your reader. You can even add hyperbole by saying 'it's raining cats and dogs' to show it's a very heavy rain!
Let's combine personification and hyperbole to describe a storm: 1. Personification: 'The lightning danced across the sky.' 2. Hyperbole: 'The thunder was louder than a jet engine.' 3. Result: 'The lightning danced across the sky while the thunder roared louder than a jet engine!'
Which of these is an example of personification?
Why do writers use hyperbole?
The sentence 'The snow wrapped the world in a white blanket' uses personification.
Review Tomorrow
In 24 hours, look at an object in your room and try to think of one human action it could do. Does your bed 'hug' you? Does your lamp 'stare'?
Practice Activity
Write three sentences about a thunderstorm. Use personification in the first, hyperbole in the second, and try to use both in the third!