When I come across really cool and fresh descriptions or dialog tags when reading books, I write them down to serve as inspiration for my own writing. A way to keep it fresh. So I thought it would be fun to share those snippets on the blog. So here goes, my first snippet from Stephen King’s Nightshift collection, Jerusalem’s Lot:
A girl with a pallid, mouldering face and a corpse-grin; a girl whose head lolled at a lunatic angle.
I love the description, whose head lolled at a lunatic angle. We don’t really know what a lunatic angle looks like (!) but it’s a powerful image nonetheless. The beauty is we can imagine it ourselves and probably come up with more frightening images than King could ever describe.
It seems so simple, yet I have never kept a journal or other notebook with inspiring info! I keep a notebook around to jot down ideas, but have never written thoughts/quotes from books. Sometimes I underline or highlight in a book, but I hate doing that to the book. What a novel idea! 🙂 AND to the quote you are referring- Steven King is AMAZING!
I know, right? Sometimes when I’m stuck or as a warm up before writing, I read my snippets. It helps get the juices flowing. And I’ve begun reading more e-books on my iPad b/c it’s easy to highlights the snippets I like and then type them into my writing journal.