HOW TO CREATE WORDS THAT BRING ATTENTION TO THEM

Abortion. Gay Marriage. Global Warming. Recycling. What are these? These are the buzz words for today. Whenever these issues come up, people have a lot to say. Granted, most of it’s just parroting what someone else has said, but it feels like we believe it, right?

Anyway what am I saying here? If possible, our works should have a buzz word or many buzz words.

These will be terms that get a reaction out of your characters, and these words may mean something only to your characters.

Before I begin, let’s look at some well-known buzz words. In Lord of the Rings, the ring is a buzz word and so is precious. Whenever those two things are mentioned, the characters come to attention like privates in the military at the call of their CO.

In The Hunger Games, the Hunger Games is the buzz word. In the Batman, the villains are the buzz words. If someone says, Scarecrow, or The Joker, or Bane, the characters perk up knowing that what comes next they’d better listen to.

Do you have buzz words? It could be an event or a main character, or a villain, or a deceased character. Anyone or anything works, but it’s a horn to your reader and to your characters that they’d better pay attention.

I don’t think that you need these words, but I feel like it helps to make a more centralized feeling within the world that you’ve creating. If you’re writing a romance, your buzz words might be marriage or break-up.

If you’re writing urban fiction, it may be a location like a coffee shop where something major happened to the character.

In The Scarlet Letter, the buzz word is more like a letter and it’s plastered on her chest. Hawthorne wins his readers with a subtle sarcasm whenever he says that the “A” is embroidered on her chest. The idea is that someone took the time to weave it with care, when no one cares about Pearl.

For those of you who haven’t read it, the scarlet letter is given to her because she commits adultery.

I hope this gives you something to think about. If you already have a few buzz words, think about using them more frequently to draw in the reader’s attention.