#anadiplosis

[swiftiesbuddie]

A fun little thing that I noticed…

In the pre-chorus of Sharpest Tool, Sabrina ends one line with the same word that the next line begins with. (Or words that sound alike.)

This is called anadiplosis.

The Wanted do this as well in their song Glad you Came.

[theyuniversity]

“Anadiplosis” is a rhetorical device in which the last word of a preceding line begins the next line.

In the picture, part of the lyrics to The Wanted’s “Glad You Came,” we can see this in action. 👍

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[tmarshconnors]

Power of Repetition in Public Speaking

After watching "Oscar-winning actor & writer Tom Hanks gives the Oxford Union an acting lesson" on YouTube I felt inspired to write this blog. The link below if interested.

Public speaking is an art that transcends mere words; it involves a deep understanding of human psychology, effective communication techniques, and the strategic use of rhetorical devices. Among these, repetition stands out as a powerful tool that can elevate a speech from ordinary to extraordinary. In this blog, we delve into the Repetition class in speaking, exploring how this technique can captivate audiences, enhance message retention, and leave a lasting impact.

The Basics of Repetition:

Repetition involves the intentional reuse of words, phrases, or ideas within a speech. When employed thoughtfully, it can create emphasis, reinforce key points, and establish a rhythm that resonates with the audience. There are various forms of repetition, each serving a unique purpose:

Anaphora: This involves repeating the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or sentences. For example, Martin Luther King Jr.'s iconic "I Have a Dream" speech masterfully uses anaphora with the repetition of "I have a dream."

Epistrophe: In contrast to anaphora, epistrophe repeats a word or phrase at the end of successive clauses or sentences. Winston Churchill's famous "We shall fight on the beaches" speech is a classic example of epistrophe in action.

Anadiplosis: This technique involves repeating the last word of one clause or sentence at the beginning of the next. This creates a seamless connection between ideas and builds momentum. Yoda's sage advice, "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering," is an example of anadiplosis.

The Impact of Repetition:

Emphasis: Repetition serves as a spotlight, directing the audience's attention to specific words or ideas. By repeating a key point, a speaker can emphasize its importance, making it more likely to be remembered.

Rhythm and Flow: A well-crafted repetition adds a musical quality to a speech, creating a rhythmic flow that engages the audience. This cadence can make the message more memorable and enjoyable.

Connection: Repetition helps to establish connections between different parts of a speech. It ties ideas together, creating a cohesive narrative that is easier for the audience to follow.

Persuasion: Through repetition, a speaker can subtly persuade the audience to adopt a particular viewpoint or take action. The consistent reinforcement of a message can influence attitudes and beliefs.

Practical Tips for Using Repetition Effectively:

Choose Key Points: Identify the core messages you want to convey, and strategically repeat key words or phrases associated with these points.

Consider Your Audience: Tailor your repetition to resonate with your audience. Understanding their preferences, values, and expectations will help you use repetition more effectively.

Vary Your Approach: While repetition is a powerful tool, overusing it can diminish its impact. Vary your repetition techniques to keep the audience engaged and interested.

Practice Pacing: The timing and pacing of repetition are crucial. Practice delivering your speech with the right rhythm to maximize its impact.

In the world of public speaking, the Repetition class is a formidable ally. When wielded with skill and precision, repetition can transform a speech into a compelling, memorable experience for both the speaker and the audience. By understanding the various forms of repetition and practising its implementation, speakers can elevate their communication skills and leave a lasting impression on those who listen.

[mossyrobins]

anaphora? isn’t that the chick from good omens?

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Some Literary Terms & Devices

Literary devices and terms - are the techniques and elements that writers use to create narrative literature, poetry, speeches, or any other form of writing.

Anadiplosis - a figure of speech in which a word or group of words located at the end of one clause or sentence is repeated at or near the beginning of the following clause or sentence. This line from the novelist Henry James is an example of anadiplosis: "Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task."

Bildungsroman - a genre of novel that shows a young protagonist's journey from childhood to adulthood (or immaturity to maturity), with a focus on the trials and misfortunes that affect the character's growth.

Chiasmus - a figure of speech in which the grammar of one phrase is inverted in the following phrase, such that two key concepts from the original phrase reappear in the second phrase in inverted order. The sentence "She has all my love; my heart belongs to her," is an example of chiasmus.

Diacope - a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is repeated with a small number of intervening words. The first line of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," is an example of diacope.

Epizeuxis - a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is repeated in immediate succession, with no intervening words. In the play Hamlet, when Hamlet responds to a question about what he's reading by saying "Words, words, words," that's an example of epizeuxis.

Foreshadowing - a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the story. Foreshadowing can be achieved directly or indirectly, by making explicit statements or leaving subtle clues about what will happen later in the text. The Russian author Anton Chekhov summarized foreshadowing when he wrote, "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off." The description of the gun on the wall, in other words, should foreshadow its later use.

Hubris - excessive pride or overconfidence, which drives a person to overstep limits in a way that leads to their downfall. In Greek mythology, the legend of Icarus involves an iconic case of hubris: Icarus is given artificial wings made of wax and feathers so that he can fly (a superhuman feat), but he ignores his father's warnings and flies too close to the sun, melting his wings and drowning in the ocean.

Irony - a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this seems like a loose definition, don't worry—it is. Irony is a broad term that encompasses three different types of irony, each with their own specific definition: verbal irony, dramatic irony, and situational irony. Most of the time when people use the word irony, they're actually referring to one of these specific types of irony.

Juxtaposition - occurs when an author places two things side by side as a way of highlighting their differences. Ideas, images, characters, and actions are all things that can be juxtaposed with one another. For example, it's a common plot device in fairy tales such as Cinderella to juxtapose the good-natured main character with a cruel step-sibling. The differences between the characters, as well as their close relation to one another, serve to highlight the main character's good qualities.

Kenning - a figure of speech in which two words are combined in order to form a poetic expression that refers to a person or a thing. For example, "whale-road" is a kenning for the sea. Kennings are most commonly found in Old Norse and Old English poetry.

Litotes - a figure of speech and a form of understatement in which a sentiment is expressed ironically by negating its contrary. For example, saying "It's not the best weather today" during a hurricane would be an example of litotes, implying through ironic understatement that the weather is, in fact, horrible.

Metonymy - a type of figurative language in which an object or concept is referred to not by its own name, but instead by the name of something closely associated with it. For example, in "Wall Street prefers lower taxes," the New York City street that was the original home of the New York Stock Exchange stands in for (or is a "metonym" for) the entire American financial industry.

Narrative - an account of connected events. Two writers describing the same set of events might craft very different narratives, depending on how they use different narrative elements, such as tone or point of view. For example, an account of the American Civil War written from the perspective of a white slaveowner would make for a very different narrative than if it were written from the perspective of a historian, or a former slave.

Onomatopoeia - a figure of speech in which words evoke the actual sound of the thing they refer to or describe. The “boom” of a firework exploding, the “tick tock” of a clock, and the “ding dong” of a doorbell are all examples of onomatopoeia.

Polyptoton - a figure of speech that involves the repetition of words derived from the same root (such as "blood" and "bleed"). For instance, the question, "Who shall watch the watchmen?" is an example of polyptoton because it includes both "watch" and "watchmen."

Quatrain - a four-line stanza of poetry. It can be a single four-line stanza, meaning that it is a stand-alone poem of four lines, or it can be a four-line stanza that makes up part of a longer poem.

Red herring - a piece of information in a story that distracts readers from an important truth, or leads them to mistakenly expect a particular outcome. Most often, the term red herring is used to refer to a "false clue"—a piece of evidence that misleads readers to believe that a crime (or other action) was committed by someone other than the actual culprit.

Sibilance - a figure of speech in which a hissing sound is created within a group of words through the repetition of "s" sounds. An example of sibilance is: "Sadly, Sam sold seven venomous serpents to Sally and Cyrus in San Francisco."

Theme - a universal idea, lesson, or message explored throughout a work of literature. One key characteristic of literary themes is their universality, which is to say that themes are ideas that not only apply to the specific characters and events of a book or play, but also express broader truths about human experience that readers can apply to their own lives. For instance, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (about a family of tenant farmers who are displaced from their land in Oklahoma) is a book whose themes might be said to include the inhumanity of capitalism, as well as the vitality and necessity of family and friendship.

Understatement - a figure of speech in which something is expressed less strongly than would be expected, or in which something is presented as being smaller, worse, or lesser than it really is. Typically, understatement is used to call attention to the very quality it pretends to downplay. For instance, if you had just eaten the most delicious meal of your life and licked the plate clean, you might jokingly tell the chef that "It was edible," making use of understatement to humorously express how much you appreciated the meal.

Verbal irony - occurs when the literal meaning of what someone says is different from—and often opposite to—what they actually mean. When there's a hurricane raging outside and someone remarks "what lovely weather we're having," this is an example of verbal irony.

Zeugma - a figure of speech in which one "governing" word or phrase modifies two distinct parts of a sentence. Often, the governing word will mean something different when applied to each part, as in the sentence, "He took his coat and his vacation." The verb "to take" makes sense with and governs both "coat" and "vacation," but is appropriate to each in a different way.

Source ⚜ More: Writing Notes & References

[jaydeiswriting]

A Mini Dissection of Ocean Vuong's Craft Choices in Night Sky with Exit Wounds

On a recent reread of Ocean Vuong's Night Sky with Exit Wounds, I indulged my rabid fascination with understanding a poet's repertoire of poetic devices and investigating the specific ways they use them in a body of work. This time, I was particularly drawn to specific uses of repetition and rhyme that and the ways they help craft meaning by creating theme and structure throughout the whole collection. Looking at two of the poems from this collection available to read online, I'm going to try to point some of these out.

Repetition Techniques

Vuong uses a lot of repetition in Night Sky with Exit Wounds in general, but the most interesting to me were his use of anadiplosis and his use of repetition as a structural element. These are both evident in the poem Eurydice, specifically here:

In these circled instances, Vuong uses anadiplosis in using a word or phrase at the end of one sentence and then repeating it in the beginning of the next sentence. [Yes, I had to expand my repertoire of literary terms to understand how to refer to what was going on here. Here's a great article on repetition techniques that taught me a ton.] The sentences are then more closely linked than the surrounding sentences, which compels me to read them together for a fuller meaning. In this specific instance, the text expresses instability (things change "depending on where you stand", gravity changes/breaks things) and the language compounds it with its shifting nature, repeating only to diverge. In some other poems, the same technique works as if to destabilize meaning, to establish an understanding of a phrase and then completely shift the context so it means something else. This is incredibly interesting when considering the context of the collection as a whole and how displacement, uncertainty, and the immigrant experience are thematically relevant. This use of repetition then expands on theme and creates a form/content agreement where the text embodies its meaning.

Here, repetition also works as a structural element, linking all the phrases in an almost stream-of-consciousness style. The repeating "depending on where you stand," "your name," and "gravity" connect the sentences and offer momentum and cohesion. This technique grounds even otherwise disjointed poems so they're still easily digestible.

[Note: if you're interested in these usages, I highly recommend checking out Billy-Ray Belcourt's "Duplex (The Future's a Fist)" in NDN Coping Mechanisms.]

Rhyme as Emphasis

Another tendency of Vuong's is to use rhyme to create emphasis, specifically where it elevates theme. Most of the poems in the collection are free verse with no set rhyme scheme and very few rhymes in general. This makes the rare rhyme much more jarring, causing it to emphasize certain words and its associations. For example, this technique adds meaning to the poem In Newport I Watch My Father Lay His Cheek to a Beached Dolphin's Wet Back, in which the rhymes highlight moments of violence and their association with the speaker's state of being.

The first instance is:

The semi-automatic is a signifier of violence, attached through rhyme to the speaker's "static" state (also automatic, as indicated by the enjambment of the phrase). This can, in the poem's context, indicate the jarring difference between the chaos and cacophony of violence and the speaker's opposite reaction of stasis, possibly even representing trauma.

Here, the rhyme between AK-47 and the speaker's age, eleven, makes a connection between violence and youth that lends to the theme of the poem, colouring the speaker's relationship with their father.

Rhyme works to create connections between words that add to meaning and theme throughout most of this body of work.

Bonus: Enjambment

As seen in the poem just above, another technique that theeads the collection is Vuong breaking compound words into their component parts over enjambments. This is present in the first excerpt of the second poem, as it goes "semi / -automatic." This specific use of enjambment can do so many different things, but I'm interested in why it comes up so much in a poetry collection with the themes listed above. I keep coming back to its use as a show of disconnection and fragmentation that feels incredibly relevant to the thematic landscape of the book.

Conclusion

Honestly, the most interesting thing about the choices poets make about when and how to employ certain poetic devices is how it often lends to the "point" of the book as a whole. The content and form echoing each other, in this poetry collection, makes it all so much more visceral and engaging.

[annadiplosis]

hiiii i just wanted to ask if ur username was like a pun on like anadiplosis cause that's like really clever it made my day

It absolutely is! I've been a rhetorical device nerd since I was in high school and the literature teacher who taught me about them actually called me Annaphora once or twice 🥲 But Annadiplosis sounds more like a regular human name, so that's what I decided to name myself after. I'm so glad my silly username made your day, thank you for your lovely message 🖤

[ari-writes-things]

OC in 15 Lines Tag

Thank you @honeybewrites for the open tag!! I've been wanting to do one of these, but it's hard as a relatively new account :D

Rules: Share 15 lines of dialogue from an OC, ideally lines that capture their vibe. Bonus points for dialogue with no context.

This is Riley Cooper! I've found that her dialogue tends to be less revealing of her character than her inner monologue so I included a few non-dialogue quotes just for fun.

"Y’know, when you really take the time to look, bulletin boards are fascinating."

"You should start listening to me more often. I’m kind of a genius."

"Have you seen Assassins? It’s not quite Bat Boy weird, but it’s pretty out there. Sondheim wrote some pretty aberrant stuff."

"Truly an American tragedy."

"What? How am I responsible for your downfall?"

"I have an umbrella. An umbrella I might be willing to share if you walk with me to drama."

"Hey, I was reading Shakespeare when I was in seventh grade."

"That's objectively untrue."

I’m also medium to large dramatic if you can’t tell that already. 

I don’t feel excited. My heart and my head are too confused to leave room for me to feel excited.

Make no mistake, I’m totally in love with the English language, but I swear (bli neder) that I’m never going to so much as think the word “anadiplosis” the minute I finish junior year.

A word like that is born straight from the sky.

She laughs a little and I smile. I’m not sure what I’m smiling about. Maybe she has a pretty laugh.

I like to have a script in my hands when I’m onstage. It’d be pretty nice to have one offstage too.

Somehow, I feel like I’ve held this warm, sticky air in my chest before, as though every diner across the country shares the same breath.

Open tag for anyone who'd like to join!

[edutainer2022]

Meta asks!!!

7 What do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? Would others agree?

8 Is what you like to write the same as what you like to read?

20 Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

24 Would you say your writing has changed over time?

@idontknowreallywhy Thank you for the asks!

7 What do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? Would others agree?

Oh! That's a good question. I'd say the constant obvious feature is emotion over plot. Most of my stories take place in one locus, or even inside one character's head. Characters mostly just think and feel on the page. They barely ever talk.

In terms of trademark style - I DOOOOO love me some parcellation and ellipsis. Because I feel the need for a story to fall into a rhythm, if read out loud, like poetry. Elliptical constructions are definitely interference from both Ukrainian and Russian where a subject in a sentence can be omitted.

I also love all types of parallel constructions and inversions/chiasmus - anaphora, epiphora, anadiplosis - you name it, it's probably there.

I know that I often fall into the adverb and synonym rabbit hole - but hey! - I'm writing in a foreign language, gotta showcase that AP English vocabulary (and get points from my seventh grade English professor).

8 Is what you like to write the same as what you like to read?

Absolutely! I'm very often a one-person-fandom or something close thereof, or I have readings of character and/or pairing that are not mainstream, so I pave my little corner with stories that I would want to read.

20 Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

The fun thing is - I don't really like to wax meta about my writing. I can do it about other fic, but I would just rather do meta about the actual canon text. The reason I write fic is because the genre of meta began to die out or people in many fandoms that I observe began to conflate "headcanon/the way I wrote it in that story" with the actual (sub/con)textual data. If I wanted to get my reading across as a concept - I needed to write it as a story or a character study piece. I'm actually not too happy about it, because I'm arguably a lot better reader and interpreter, than a writer.

In terms of the actual question: I think a recurring symbol is, of course, the Pieta (a martyr being held in compassion, exhausted and limp) and the themes that go with it - laying down one's burdens, heavy head that bears the crown, the loneliness of leadership and legacy, the crushing weight of the world. Existential doubt and angst. Grief. Always an exploration of prolonged unprocessed grief and its many facets and symptoms. Father and son (heir apparent) dynamics is probably the one that I zero in on without fail. In TAG, while I love the exploration of brothers' relationship with Scott, it's Scott and Jeff that utterly mesmerize me. Also "a heart in conflict with itself", always. So many of my stories across fandoms are character vignettes of the "tall, dark, handsome, and emotionally compromised".

24 Would you say your writing has changed over time?

This is also a peculiar thing I've observed - I happen to believe my writing has gotten worse. I used to be very proud of the impressionistic drabbles I would write out back in the day. Objectively, I do understand they were closer to graded essays than the stories I write out now. My writing has become more... accomodated to a straightforward narrative - who goes where and says what. I also objectively understand that writing is a learned skill, so having been practicing so extensively, I couldn't have gone that observably worse. But I in general feel like my brain is working worse through the past 2,5 years of the war - less bright, less quick and eloquent. I would very much like to snap out of it. But for that I probably need to stop being under constant stress, duress and mortal threat on a daily basis.

[donggatto]

Figuras retóricas

En el jardín del tiempo, dulce aurora danza,

Metáforas brillantes en el cielo se enlazan.

Un sol radiante, símil de esperanza pura,

Sus rayos son versos que la vida augura.

Cual río serpenteante, va la vida en flujo,

Hipérboles exaltan cada risa, cada enojo.

Anáforas en coro, eco de emociones,

Repetidas se alzan como olas en mareas.

En el horizonte, la noche se insinúa,

Comparaciones pintan la luna que flotúa.

Sus ojos, cual estrellas, metonimia de luz,

Guiando nuestros pasos, un faro en la cruz.

Mas allá del velo, el sueño se despliega,

Prosopopeya en flores, la noche se entrega.

El viento susurra, apostrofe de los árboles,

Personificación del mundo en sus cables.

Al alba, la aliteración canta su canción,

Las sílabas se abrazan, creando un lazo de unión.

En el rincón del alma, la anadiplosis late,

El eco de lo eterno, un ciclo que reparte.

Así en este verso, figuras se congregan,

Un crisol de retórica, donde el alma juega.

El poema deviene un caleidoscopio,

Donde el lenguaje es arte, en su máximo esplendor.

-Mario Latabán Arredondo

[9puppiesdrowninginapool]

hummus save me, save me, save me hummus is a beautiful anadiplosis

[theyuniversity]

“Anadiplosis” is a rhetorical device in which the last word of a preceding line begins the next line. In the picture, part of the lyrics to The Wanted’s “Glad You Came,” we can see this in action. 👍

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[bettsfic]

i don't usually respond to tags but these were just an intense misunderstanding of what i'm saying that i want to address it in case other people also had this misperception.

first of all, literary analysis and rhetorical analysis are different things, as are literary devices and rhetorical devices. in fact they're largely different fields of study, although they do have some commonalities. literary analysis makes larger claims of a text using different theories: queer theory, marxist theory, ecofeminist theory, etc. rhetorical analysis, however, makes claims of how a text is put together and in what way it affects its audience.

it's likely that you would have received the basics of these fields in high school or in your English comp/intro lit class in college. of literary analysis, you would have been introduced to how to read a text critically and make a claim about it. of rhetorical analysis, you might have been introduced to things like ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos. these are both classes that i teach so i'm pretty familiar with their objectives and where you want a student to be by the end of the semester.

the ability to identify both rhetorical and literary devices is a far different skill than deploying them in a narrative that you yourself write. i know this because i've spent many years as an editor desperate for any evidence of rhetorical and literary devices in most of the work i read. when it comes to line-level editing, my job usually is to punch up sentences and paragraphs by suggesting ways that these devices can be used. style is a difficult thing to define, but style can very much be influenced by employing rhetoric.

rhetorical devices, the nitty gritty ones, aren't taught in college unless it's your major. they're not even taught in most creative writing MFAs. they weren't even taught in my English PhD. these are things like polyptoton, merism, aposiopesis, hyberbaton, anadiplosis, diacope, hendiadys, etc. if you went to a boarding school or catholic school that still had 19th century teaching practices, you would have learned these. in fact this was what English higher education was for a very long stretch of human history. so it's totally possible you have an in-depth understanding of rhetoric from high school, but that is a rarity in the American school system.

so i agree, using rhetorical devices in fiction isn't a hack. however in the grand scheme of things, it's very fascinating to me how you can write a sentence or a paragraph in such a way that it will emotionally and intellectually affect a reader differently than if you didn't use that device. that's the study of rhetoric, and that's why it's more complicated than you're giving it credit for. it's how you impact an audience, and the way you impact an audience happens on a very myopic level. this post is just calling attention to the fact that you can do this with intention, and so it can sometimes feel like a magic trick. you know how you used the device, in fact using that device is simple and mechanical, but the person reading it who is affected by that device may be in awe of how you did it.

writing cheats

i know i’ve probably written about these all individually but i’m putting them together in one post. these are writing tricks that are extremely cheap and dirty; when you use them it feels like cheating and honestly by posting them i’m probably exposing all the easy moves in my own work, but more than a writer i am a teacher, so here you go, some writing cheats that have never steered me wrong.

quick character creation

what’s really annoying is when you have two characters sitting at a restaurant or something and the server has to come by. to what degree do you describe the server so that it’s clear they’re just a background character but that they’re not just a faceless form, so that the world has texture without taking up too much space on the page? rule of three, babeyyy: two normal things and a weird one.

she had pale skin and blue eyes but her hair was dyed black like a 2010 emo kid.

he was tall and broad, and he wore a sweatshirt with an embroidered teddy bear on it.

the woman stood there comparing the prices of toilet paper. she had a short angled bob and carried a keychain the length of a trout.

why does it work? it gives the reader something to hang onto, a brief observation that shows the world exists around your narrator. it also works when introducing main characters, but there’s so much action going on that you can’t take time to write a rich long paragraph about them. all you need is a little hook.

quick setting creation

i used to TOIL over descriptive paragraphs. for years i was like, description is my weakness, i must become better at developing imagery. i believed this because a famous writer once projected a paragraph i had written onto a screen and asked my cohort, “count how many images are crafted in this paragraph.” there were none. none! my friends were sitting there like, “we are TRYING” but they couldn’t find any.

i would say that after years of studying imagery development at the sentence level, i am, perhaps, competent at it, but what was more helpful was for me to shrug and tell myself, “i’m just not a writer who does that.”

anyway. my cheat is thus: 

there’s not much you can assume about your audience. the audience is not a homogenous whole. but your ideal audience is something you can guess at, and that means you can play around with their existing knowledge and expectations. 

if you say your characters are in a tacky shit-on-the-walls restaurant, if your ideal reader is an american who went to restaurants during the maximalist era of franchise design, they will conjure their nearest memory of one of those places. and for those readers who aren’t familiar with it, they’ll use other context clues to conjure that space. the point is, you don’t have to list every single stupid license plate nailed to the wall. you can leave it as one detail of one sentence and let your reader extrapolate from there.

if i say the dentist’s office looked like a gutted 90s taco bell, maybe no ideal audience would have ever seen a place like that, but a lot of people can mentally conjure a dentist’s office and a 90s taco bell and overlay them together to create a weird and fun image.

you can go even simpler than that: a bathroom the size of an airplane lavatory. a tiny studio apartment with a hotplate instead of a stove. a mansion with a winding stairwell. the point is that you want to define the size of the space and its general vibes.

in some ways detailed description can be overrated, because your reader conjures images even in absence of them on the page. and for those readers who can’t mentally conjure images, it doesn’t matter anyway; they take you at your word. the trick is to figure out what details are unexpected, relevant to understanding the story and its characters, and those are the things that you add in.

one other note: after working with hundreds of writers on drafting, for *most* of us it’s difficult to develop images and establish setting in a first draft. it’s nearly always something to be saved for a second or later draft. i think it’s because while we’re writing we tend to put character and action first.

nail the landing

there’s a joke i heard once from a writer i really admire: “you know it’s literary fiction if the story ends with a character looking at a body of water.”

and god it’s so painfully sad and true how easy it is to nail the landing of a given story by ending on a totally irrelevant piece of imagery. the final beat of a story followed by your character looking up at the sky and seeing a flock of birds in the shape of a V flying past. or maybe they’re sitting in their car and they count the rings of a nearby church bell. or maybe they watch an elderly couple walk down the sidewalk hand-in-hand. i don’t know!! when in doubt shove an observation, an image, whatever, something neutral at the end and it’ll sound profound. 

(this cheat is the only one that can really bite you in the ass because if the image is too irrelevant you risk tonal incongruity. for use only in the most desperate of times.)

sentence fragments

when writers ask me how to punch up their writing or start developing their own style, my go-to advice is to give up the idea of a complete sentence. fuck noun-verb-object. if you have a series of character actions, knock off the sentence subjects like in script action. if the clause at the end of your sentence is particularly meaningful, don’t separate it with a comma but a period and make it its own thing. if your character is going through something particularly stressful or heinous, that bitch is not thinking in complete thoughts so you don’t have to convey them that way. make punctuation bend to your will!!

rhetorical moves

this one opened a lot of doors for me stylistically. remember that famous writer who called me out on my lack of imagery? i always thought his prose was beautiful, that he’s one of the best living prose writers, etc. once i learned more about rhetoric though, i realized he just employed it a lot. 

usually when we talk about beautiful sentences it means a sentence that uses rhetorical devices. the greeks were like, you know what, when we give speeches there are certain ways to phrase things that make the audience go nuts. let’s identify what those things are and give them names so we can use them intentionally and convince people of our opinions.

i love shakespeare, i really do, but one of the big reasons he’s still a household name today and his plays are still performed is because every sentence of every goddamn play utilizes a rhetorical device. the audience is hard-wired to vibrate at the sound and cadence of his writing, like finding the spot on a dog that makes their foot thump. for five hundred years, william shakespeare has been scritching that spot for us.

i have no idea why, cognitively, rhetorical devices are so effective. i’m no rhetorician. all i know is that well-deployed anaphora makes a reader want to throw their panties on stage. my intro to rhetorical devices was the wonderful book the elements of eloquence by mark forsyth, a surprisingly fun read! hopefully that will open some doors for you the way it did for me. 

the downside to this is that once you know rhetorical devices, it’s like learning how the sausage is made. on one hand, as a writer, you’ll have a lot stronger grasp of style, but as a reader good prose loses some of its magic.  

pacing it out

many writers, myself included, rely on the tried and true “he bit the inside of his cheek” or other some such random action to help pace out dialogue. one time my thesis advisor sat me down and said “you’ve got to take all of those out.”

“all of them?” i said.

“all of them,” she said.

i thought, but that will weaken the text! it didn’t. once i cut what i came to call cheek-biter sentences i never went back. and now when i edit for other people i’m like, look i know where you’re coming from but just cut all these out and see how the scene stands. if it doesn’t feel right you can put some back in. a lot of times when you’re drafting you put those in the way some people say “um.” they’re just sentences you jot while you’re thinking of what the other character says, so from a writing perspective it seems like you’re pacing, but readers don’t read it that way. they just want to get to the next line of dialogue.

but sometimes you really do need to pace out a scene and i think there are other ways to do that that don’t rely on banal physical movements, such as:

interiority: a sentence or paragraph of relevant cognition, bonus points if you weave in background context. good interiority defines the voice of your writing.

observations: i know i just said description is overrated but idk sometimes you just need a character to note the back and forth clacking of one of those desk ball toy things.

character texture: maybe your character notes something about the person they’re talking to. a wilted pocket square. a mole that looks like it needs looked at by a dermatologist. a scar on their forehead. some detail that deepens or complicates our understanding of a character.

narratorial consciousness and access

this one is less a cheat and more a problematic opinion i have that doesn’t win me any popularity in writing circles.

i believe that if you’re writing in first person or close third or any narration which is dedicated to the mind of one character, you are only ever obligated to convey the experience of that character’s consciousness. and nothing else.

by that i mean, if your point of view character is unobservant? then they’re not going to even notice the flight attendant is missing one of their canine teeth. if your pov character is focused and obsessive, they’re going to think lavish, detailed paragraphs about that which they’re obsessed with and have no acknowledgement of the rest of the world. if your pov character has no understanding of time, does your story even need to be linear?

defining the scope of a narrator’s cognition early on can give you parameters in which to work. even if you don’t consciously do this, you still do it. if you write in third person limited present tense without really thinking about it, that’s your scope. i’m just pointing out you can choose to do it differently. you get to define your narrator. 

whenever we talk about narration we also talk about information access and the order of information being revealed/conveyed. writing must always be in order; even if you’re writing multiple concurring things, it still has to be rendered on the page in order one after the next, because the human mind can’t read two sentences over top of one another. 

if we’re restricted to the mind of a character, that means we’re also restricted by their knowledge and experiences, and this can be used to your benefit. i don’t want to take too much space for this but i do talk more about the relationship between narration and reality here.

in short, you the writer get to choose 

what the reader knows,

in what order they know it, and

its relationship to the presumed real events of the story, which develops the (un)reliability of your narrator

okay going to cut this off now before i go on more rants about narrative scope. i hope you found this helpful and go on to put some of these nasty lifehacks in your own writing!!

[thelittlepoetworld]

#90 HIKAHOS

(Tulang Ipinasa Sa: KBN S3, Pangalawang Laban) (Tema: Mga Anghel Na Walang Langit) (Paksa: Mga Basâng Sisiw sa Tag-araw) Dati ako ay sagana sa pera dahil may KITA, KITAng pangkabuhayan at palaging TUMATAGAKTAK, Sa mga mamimili ang aking panindang TAGAKTAK , Gaya ng damit panloob kaya ako’y NAKAIPON. Dahil NAKAIPON naman para sa aking KAILANGAN, KAILANGAN sa hinaharap upang ako’y may MAGAMIT, MAGAMIT sa panahon ng delubyo’t SAKUNA, SAKUNAng ‘di maiwasan kung kalikasan may GAWA. GAWA nating mga tao kaya PINAPARUSAHAN, PINAPARUSAHAN tayo sa ating PAGKAKASALA, PAGKAKASALANG siningil sa matinding UNOS, Ang UNOS na dahilan kung bakit ngayon ay HIKAHOS. Copyright © 2021 BALOCSIN ————————————————————————— *Mechanics: Titulo - 1-3  Saknong: 3 Taludtod : 4 kada saknong Pantig: 16 hanggang 22 kada taludtod Tugmaan: ABAB CDCD EFEF

Hamon: —Lagyan ng estilong ANADIPLOSIS ang kabuuan ng tula.

[dankusner]

Anadiplosis

is a figure of speech or literary device in which a word that appears at the end of a clause or sentence repeats at the beginning of the next clause or sentence.

Writers use anadiplosis to conceptually connect clauses, emphasize themes, or create a rhythm.

[amitapaul]

40/26

26/4/24

MetaPoem on NaPoGloPo

Just an excuse, only the slightest tap of the shoulder perhaps,

A thought hook, a mere memory, a story, a sound, a book,

A question, a query, a quest, a word, written or unwritten,

A phrase, a form, a formula, a fantasy, a figment,

Anything will do, to bring out what’s bursting in you.

Reams and reams roll out describing dreams

Inscribing in ink what I imagine, what you yearn for,

Our hopes, our aspirations, our inspirations, our desires

So similar yet varied, underlining our shared humanity

As dozens respond to the same prompt from the same source.

Is this the Spiritus Mundi , ''a universal memory and a 'muse' of sorts

that provides inspiration to the poet or writer” according to William Butler Yeats ?

Is this Hive Mind ? One Humankind ? Humming Live ?

The World-wide Web alive with sparking nodes ?

Geological and Electric Lodes ?

Writing together with Poets across the Globe in GloPoWriMo

Gives us this feeling of Community, with all Humanity,

People tip- tap- typing away, scribblers scribbling,

Questioners quibbling, poem- hunters hunting, poem-punters dribbling …

The Ball mustn’t fall or stop still but keep rolling

Runners running and slower strollers leisurely strolling

Keep the readers reading, their screens constantly scrolling

Cajoling, consoling, gambolling, eye- rolling, extolling

With Rhyme and Reason, Consonances, Assonances , Dissonances,

Alliteration, Anadiplosis, Anacolutha, Anaphora

and Anagrams.

O the Euphoria of Deep Metaphoria !

( over the Drone of Rhymezone ! )

( ASA )

#24gloponapowrimo #amitasinfinity

Prompt : Write a poem that involves alliteration, consonance, and assonance