Word Hero: A Fiendishly Clever Guide to Crafting the Lines that Get Laughs, Go V

Description: Word Hero by Jay Heinrichs Yes, its true: you can learn how to be a verbal wizard! Ever hear someone utter an unforgettable phrase and feel yourself reacting with with…well, awe? Ever read a great quote and think I could never come up with anything that clever? Daunting as it may seem, theres nothing mystical about witcraft. Crafting memorable lines doesnt require DNA-encoded brilliance. What it does require is some knowledge of the tricks and techniques that make words stick. In Word Hero, Jay Heinrichs rescues the how-to of verbal artistry from cobwebbed textbooks and makes it entirely fresh– even a little mischievous. Fear not: on offer here are not dry, abstract ideas couched in academic jargon. Rather, Heinrichs takes you on an amusing – and amazingly helpful – tour of the mechanisms that make powerful language work. Youll learn how to slyly plant your words in peoples heads and draw indelible verbal pictures by employing such tools as "crashing symbols," "rapid repeaters," "Russian Dolls" and even the powers of Mr. Potato Head. With those tools and others tucked in your utility belt, you might not immediately achieve "wordsmith immortality" but you will become a better speaker, writer, and raconteur…and long after people have forgotten everything else, theyll remember your priceless lines. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Author Biography JAY HEINRICHS spent twenty-six years as a writer, editor, and magazine-publishing executive before becoming a full-time advocate for the lost art of rhetoric. He now lectures widely on the subject, to audiences ranging from Ivy League students to NASA scientists to Southwest Airlines executives, and runs the language blog figarospeech.com. Review "If you dare to be clever with words, Word Hero will help you to make good on that dare." --Richard Lederer, nationally bestselling author of ANGUISHED ENGLISH and GET THEE TO A PUNNERY "WORD HERO takes the mystery out of clever wordplay and hands readers the tools to craft unforgettable expressions of their own. Way to spill the beans, Heinrichs. With this little book, everyone and their mother will know the secrets to being witty, pithy, and memorable. From my spot in the unemployment line, I stab at thee." --June Casagrande, author of IT WAS THE BEST OF SENTENCES, IT WAS THE WORST OF SENTENCES "Whether your goal is to pen unforgettable ad copy, add zest to your fiction, or just release a cascade of laughter, WORD HERO will get you there. Prepare to learn a lot -- and be simultaneously amused." --Jan Venolia, author of REWRITE RIGHT!, WRITE RIGHT! and THE RIGHT WORD "If you love words, WORD HERO will magnify your wit, wisdom, and creative expression." --Dave Trottier, author of THE SCREENWRITERS BIBLE"This will be of interest to readers on debate teams or in creative-writing classes, as well as to anyone needing a few pointers to make their speech stand out. For anyone fascinated by fun, fantastic, and frivolous words, or for those who want to give speeches where the susurration of their words causes listeners hearts to thud, this is the book." --School Library Journal Review Quote "Whether your goal is to pen unforgettable ad copy, add zest to your fiction, or just release a cascade of laughter, WORD HERO will get Excerpt from Book 1 PRACTICE WITCRAFT The Square Root of Rainbows Formulas for Memorability My first real lesson in what I call "witcraft" came off a loading dock in Philadelphia. I was sixteen and just starting my first summer job at a department store. My assigned mentor, Al, was a man of the world at least two years my senior. He led me onto a semitrailer and pulled a thousand-dollar dress from a hanging rack. "Observe." Al ripped the fabric down the middle, recorded the dress as damaged, and turned significantly to me. "With responsibility," he said, "comes great power." I had heard the old chestnut about power and responsibility, but it had never occurred to me that a cliche could be corrupted so deliciously. From that day on, I hung on to everything the guy said. In retrospect, he wasnt all that witty, and his bon mot certainly wasnt worth a designer gown. Needless to say, Al proved to be a dubious moral guide; next day he taught me how to surf the roof of a moving delivery van. But that summer he became my first living Word Hero. In the years since, Ive studied witcraft as an effective way to change peoples emotions, their minds, and their willingness to act. I learned how to get peoples attention and make a good impression, even better than the one Al made on me. I wrote a book, Thank You for Arguing, and went on to coach rhetoric, the art of persuasion, with students, lawyers, corporate execs, and aerospace engineers. I read all the ancient and modern rhetorical wisdom I could find and have employed the advice and help of hundreds of experts. But Al was the first to teach me the essence of word heroism: with a very little wit comes great power. THE SHAPE AND FORM OF HEROISM Since then Ive had some terrific mentors. The great Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero--lowborn, stubby, turnip-nosed Cicero--stood on words and led the Roman republic. He and other rhetoricians through history, from Joan of Arc to Barack Obama, grasped the secrets of image crafting through witcraft. They set their words in stone, sometimes literally. They were Word Heroes. Id like to help make you, too, into a Word Hero; maybe not on the order of a Shakespeare or Churchill, but someone who holds a share of immortality. Word heroism takes very few words--no more than a dozen or so. Few of us remember Franklin Roosevelts speeches, but many of us remember the memorable, the characteristic parts, that made FDR FDR. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." "This is a day that will live in infamy." To create memorable words yourself, you simply need to discover a set of techniques,--forty-three in all--that have been used by masters from Winston Churchill to Jimmy Kimmel. These tools will help you focus on the few words that count the most in a conversation, argument, important email, blog post, thank-you letter, college paper, or presentation. This book does far more than merely list the techniques, though. Consider it a course in self-taught heroism, and use it to develop your own unforgettability. From the next chapter on, you will progress through the stages of phrase-making mastery, beginning with Word Apprentice and working up to Word Hero, that rarified state where your witcraft compels people to remember your name. By the time you achieve word heroism, you will have gained: * Confidence in your ability to write and speak * Knowledge of what makes a memorable expression memorable * Prowess in producing the right words in just the right order for maximum effect * Skill in the techniques used (consciously or instinctively) by the most unforgettable personalities in history and pop culture Youll project a strong, articulate personality, the kind people like and respect. But were talking about more than image polishing. Were talking about a lasting image, one that lingers after you leave the room--or this mortal coil, for that matter. The right words, arranged perfectly, leave a lasting impression in an audiences brain. And what are the techniques to create this magic? Figures of speech. Word sounds and rhythms, puns and wordplay qualify as figures--the term rhetoricians give words in unusual context or order. You know the expression "Thats just a figure of speech." Personally, I object to the "just." Figures can do for speech what architectural forms do for a cityscape, or the female human form does to your average randy male. A figure in the physical world composes the shape or form of something; look at the Washington Monument on a foggy day and youll make out the figure of a column. Less monumentally, we traditionally call a womans shape or form her figure. A figure of speech works the same way, usually without the obsession over phallic architecture and weight loss. This rhetorical figure constitutes the shape or form of words in a sentence. Figures get an audiences attention because they stand out from the rest of language. Take this head-snapping hyperbole from the TV show Glee: Sue: You have enough product in your hair to season a wok. An unexpected ending to an ordinary line (again, in Glee) can get an audiences attention. Kurt: Hes cheating off a girl who thinks the square root of four is rainbows. You can raise eyebrows by ironically agreeing with your interlocutor. Will: Whos to say everything I do is one hundred percent on the ball? Sue: No one would say that. Its all about delivering the unexpected. The audience unconsciously hyperfocuses on your words and makes its own links to the familiar. The effort makes them more than passive listeners. They become active participants in your words. (If youre witty enough, you hear this participation in the form of laughter.) The links the brain makes between the familiar and the less familiar take place in electrochemical connections called synapses. Imagine if you ran into Angelina Jolie on an elevator. Even if you had never met her before, your brain has linked up enough synapses that you would have no trouble recognizing her. Stranger who doesnt know me, the brain says, while the synapses fire like crazy: Movies. Dark-haired women. Fat lips. Hollywood beauties. Eighty-seven adopted kids. Brangelina. And so on. What got your attention in the first place was the shock of seeing this familiar-looking woman. Your brain did the rest. Memorability comes in part from linking the familiar (Angelina!) with the unfamiliar (Hollywood star in my elevator!). The utterly familiar, on the other hand (same creepy guy you see every day, inspection sticker), gets ignored. You know how camouflage works, using patterns and colors to fade into the background. Similarly, a good spy looks perfectly ordinary and speaks in perfectly ordinary ways. To rouse someones awareness, you do the opposite: go for the unusual and unexpected. Later on, youll see figures that help you sneak up on an audience and give it a rhetorical knock on the head. The more surprising figures mug the audiences expectations, twist grammar or logic, or marry unlike things. You can use them to look witty, tell a memorable story, get a laugh, or change the emotions in the room. But all figures deliver something out of the ordinary. Every good figure is an attention-getting figure. I selected the best figures for the tools in this book. The easiest and most fun part of rhetoric, figures compose the core of my language blog, Figarospeech.com, where I take on the guise of Figaro (last name "Speech"), a committed, even obsessive, "figurist," or coiner of figures. Figaro explores the tricks and pratfalls of language in politics and the media. Owing to our national ignorance of rhetoric, I tend to find more pratfalls than tricks. But knowing your figures can turn you from someone of the pratfall variety into a skilled practitioner of the art. With the right tools, you will gain the ability to compose beautiful prose, express irrefutable anger, proclaim your love, get people on your side, or thank them as they have never been thanked. Figures can do all that. The Greeks believed in them so much that the philosopher Plato actually wanted to ban them. If Plato had had his way, Athens might have had a figure czar just as we have a drug czar. He had a point. Figures in the wrong hands can be powerful forces for evil as well as for good. In fact, your ability to spot their use will let you see through the tricks of marketers and politicians. In your own hands, well, make sure you act the hero. A warning: too much of this good thing--this witcraft and clever wording--can become an embarrassment of riches, overwhelming your audience or turning it off. Not even Churchill and MLK came up with a blockbuster in every sentence. Their audiences heads would have exploded. Use the tools in the book for a few great memorable words, and then build your other, simpler words around them. WORD IT LIKE WARREN In fact, born Word Heroes use figures instinctively without sounding overly ornate. Take Warren Buffett. Investors read his annual Berkshire Hathaway chairmans letter as if it came from the oracle of Delphi. They savor his wit while they glean the secrets of the worlds savviest investor. OK, they read mostly for the investment secrets; but how many investment letters get quoted for decades afterward? Warren Buffetts do, because he proves himself to be a wizard at figures, the rhetorical as well as the business kind. For instance, Buffett clearly likes one of my own favorite devices: taking cliches l Details ISBN0307716368 Author Jay Heinrichs Short Title WORD HERO Language English ISBN-10 0307716368 ISBN-13 9780307716361 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY 808.042 Pages 352 Residence Hanover, NH, US Year 2011 Publication Date 2011-10-04 Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2011-10-04 NZ Release Date 2011-10-04 US Release Date 2011-10-04 UK Release Date 2011-10-04 Publisher Random House USA Inc Imprint Random House Inc Subtitle A Fiendishly Clever Guide to Crafting the Lines that Get Laughs, Go Viral, and Live Forever Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:37337366;

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