In my writing studies, we sometimes did little writing exercises. One of my favorites was to “embellish sentences”: to take the content of a short sentence and make it go Baroque. Here’s one:
She was cleaning the birds.
One for the money…what money? What “one” and for what money?
She shook her head as she continued working.
Two for the show…Oh, to go to the show. She’d seen the bright lights outside the theater, she’d seen the ladies in their finery. She’d heard about the warm plush chairs and wondered what the warm would smell like, would sound like. She wondered what it would be like to sit in the dark and see the action beginning on the stage – a voice projecting, a single person filling the entire room, mesmerizing, taking her breath away…
Three to get ready…Some day she’d go to the show. With a man. She’d know what to wear, what to say, smile knowingly at the jokes, cry at the right times, daintily dabbing her eyes dry. She’d be clean, no trace of grime below her nails, no smell of hung bird in her hair.
Four to go…She placed the cleaned bird to the side and took the next down from its hook.
One for the money…
