Become a better writer: How to use personification

This lesson will transform your writing by making it richer and more interesting to read. How can you do that, you ask? By using personification, a style of writing which makes an object come to life as if it were a person. Let me explain. If you haven’t done your homework one night, and it is getting late, you might stare at your school books and feel anger or panic. You could say, “My evil textbooks were staring at me, laughing”. Of course, your books are objects that have no emotions, but as a person, you might attribute feelings to objects, and this is what we call “personification”. The next time you write a story, why not use this technique once or twice, to make the text more engaging? Watch the lesson to find out how to use this technique, with plenty of examples. Test yourself with the quiz: https://www.engvid.com/become-a-better-writer-personification/

NEXT, watch these lessons to take your learning even further:

1. Improve your Writing: Show, Not Tell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHdzv1NfZRM&list=PLpRs5DzS7VqpcTS7hXJU4ARPwSETGI1gy&index=20

2. 50 adjectives to describe what you see, hear, feel, smell, and taste: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjKCXBHvMQw&list=PLpRs5DzS7VqpcTS7hXJU4ARPwSETGI1gy&index=14

TRANSCRIPT

Hello. Welcome back to engVid. Today we have a writing lesson for you to transform your writing so that it becomes richer and more interesting to read. Okay. What are we talking about? We're talking about personification today. "Personification", let's just write it, there. "Person", "fication" - that suffix means making into. So, we're making into a person an object or a non-human thing.

For example: "The car. The car screamed around the corner." If I say: "The car screamed", I'm exaggerating the noise of the car. It's obviously got a very powerful engine; slightly antisocial. Okay? "The car screamed around the corner." It exaggerates how much of a hurry this car is in.

"The sun". Okay? Which one of these words do you think would go with "sun"? Would the sun watch? Not really. So, it's either going to be a nice feeling, the sun - it's warming us; or it's too hot, in which case it's going to be slightly unpleasant. "The sun sat... Sat up in the sky"? Possibly. "The sun spat" - no, that sounds more like rain than sunshine to me. What about "glared"? Okay? It's looking and it's quite harmful, these rays. "The sun glared out. The sun glared out, shining its harmful UV rays into the person's skin." Right.

"The house". The house can either: "spit", "sit", or "watch". What should we go for? "The house spat out"? No. "The nightclub spat out the drunk", but I don't think we're going to have a house spitting. It may be sitting, though. "The house was perched; the house was sat on the top of the hill from which there was a fantastic view."

"The clock", "watched". "The clock", "the clock". Let's go for the ones that's easiest first; it's always a good exam technique - you go what's... Through what's easier first. "The washing machine spat out the dirty clothes at the end of the cycle." A "cycle" is a complete sort of revolution; it's a complete trip in the washing machine. A trip in the washing machine? You know what I mean. It's when the clothes go in and it finishes.

That means we have: "The clock" and "watched". "The clock watched the inhabitants of the house mournfully." Okay? "Mournfully" - an adverb to express sadness.

So, what are we doing here? What we're doing is we're bringing to life these objects. They're kind of turning into characters. We don't say: "he" or "she" for objects, like you do in other languages, but we can use personification to describe and give things more of a quality.

Let's have another go:
"The washing machine _________ my change".
Okay? So, a vending machine is something, you know, you put a coin in, get a can of Coke or get a chocolate bar, or something healthier. Right? I've put some money into the vending machine, and it's taken that money and not given me a can of Coke. So, obviously that's quite annoying, so I want to turn this vending machine into an annoying person. Okay? So, what's going to be an annoying action? I need to describe the swallowing of my change. That's something a human could do; a human swallows. Let's have that kind of idea, but I'm going to use: "gobbled up". "The vending machine gobbled up my change." Nasty vending machine.

Then what's it going to do? "It..." Hmm.
"It _________ at me as if it had not done anything wrong."
Okay? So, I don't know about you, but when I'm a teacher and I look out to my class and I catch someone doing something they shouldn't do, and they'll often go: "Mm, no. I haven't done anything wrong." Okay? It's the same with this vending machine. We're trying to turn them into a human being. "It stared at me as if it had not done anything." Obviously, the vending machine doesn't eyes... Doesn't have eyes, but we're giving it a human characteristic. […]

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