Words

I remember the first time I read Looking For Alaska by John Green in middle school, a poignant story with sprinkles of romance and teen shenanigans. I definitely recommend it to those of you who like young adult fiction (I do recommend a lot of these, don’t I? ). This isn’t really about the book, though. It’s mostly about books in general.

Well, words, to be more specific.

So, I’m a bit of a crier. You know, when there’s a sad scene in a book or a movie (I haven’t quite reacted that much to a song), I get tears in my eyes.

This gets me thinking, though, about the power that words have over us, and not just prose. Everything that we say to others elicits some kind of emotion. Wenlan recently made a post about hate, and how it affects people. And what is that? Hate is just a word. H-a-t-e. One syllable. Four letters. Yet it’s so powerful.

This is especially true in novels. You know, on some level, that what you’re looking at are just flat, two-dimensional symbols on a flat, not-quite-two-dimensional piece of paper. It shouldn’t mean anything, but it does. Somehow, we’ve made them mean something. We’ve given them emotional value.  We’ve given them the ability to paint pictures, to create people, and to put words in their mouths.

That’s why I think the craft of writing is amazing.

It seems so simple, when you look at it, but somehow it makes people feel.

--Ji

P.S. A bigger version of the picture at the top can be found here.
You can make your own here.