Bring The Ineffable Juice To Your Prose

One of the fun exercises we do in the Poetry Workshop is incorporating juicy word pairs into our work to bring out the flavour in our words.
Like word spices :)

You don't have to be a poet to incorporate this technique into your own writing, and maybe - just maybe - you'll discover aspects of your voice you never realized you had.

Here's what you do:

Make a list of as many juicy verbs as you can. What I mean by "juicy" are those words that feel interesting. Words like: scrabble, brittle, hush, cringe, screech... there's no limit.

Then, pair them up with nouns or other words in your work.​

You get the picture. Now take a look at one of your paragraphs or poems, and see if you can strategically add some juicy word pairs to your work. Then note what happens.

The brittle sun shone half-heartedly through a gathering of clouds scorching overhead. Stone sauntered along a fine gravel path, fitting in seamlessly with the tweedy, professor crowd, attracting ineffable stares of scrabbled undergraduate girls.

Of course, you don't want to overdo this (like I did above, for the purpose of demonstration). Be thoughtful and sparse for greater impact.