People who want to take up creative writing often study the works of Shakespeare, Hemingway and Faulkner. Those are fair-to-middling wordsmiths. But if students really want to see examples of inventive phraseology, they need look no further than the real estate ads in their local newspapers. Here are examples of how written promotion departs from on-the-ground visual impressions:

Family sized farming operation.
If the family is small and does not plan to eat regularly.

Hunting and grazing land.
You have to hunt for the grazing land.

Well watered.
About half of the place floods when it rains more than three-quarters of an inch.

Modern livestock facilities.
A leaky calf barn and two sides of a corral are still standing.

Secluded.
You need a Pawnee scout and two trail hounds to find the place.

Isolated.
Even the real-estate agent hasn't been able to locate it.

Native pasture.
Buckbrush and poison ivy, with 12 sprigs of grass per acre.

Unimproved pasture.
Two tons of lime were spread in 1991.

Improved pasture.
A fertilizer truck turned around in the driveway two years ago.

Rustic ranch house.
House is occupied by two ground squirrels and a colony of bats.

Energy-efficient charmer.
The furnace doesn't work.

Illness forces sale.
The present owner is sick of the place.

Handyman's dream.
And a contractor's retirement plan.

These examples barely tap the fund of creative expression employed in real-estate advertising, but this is a fair sampling. Writers of legitimate fiction could take lessons here.