#been overusing asyndeton and polysyndeton in my writings for years

[literaryvein-reblogs]

more literary terms

Asyndeton: The omission of a conjunction from a list ('chips, beans, peas, vinegar, salt, pepper').

Elision: The omission of one or more letters or syllables from a word. This is usually marked by an apostrophe: as in 'he's going to the shops'.

Feminine Rhyme: a rhyme of two syllables in which the final syllable is unstressed ('mother | brother'). If an iambic pentameter ends in a feminine rhyme the last, unstressed, syllable is usually not counted as one of the ten syllables in the line ('To be or not to be, that is the question' - the 'ion' is unstressed and takes the line into an eleventh syllable). Feminine rhyme can be used for comic effect, as it is frequently in the works of Byron: 'I've spent my life, both interest and principle, | And think not what I thought, my soul invincible.' It can also be sometimes used to suggest a feminine subject-matter, as in Shakespeare's Sonnet 20, which is addressed to the 'master mistress of my passion' and which makes extensive use of 'feminine' rhymes.

Polysyndeton: The use of multiple conjunctions, usually where they are not strictly necessary ('chips and beans and fish and egg and peas and vinegar and tomato sauce').

Topos: from a Greek word meaning 'place', a 'topos' in poetry is a 'commonplace', a standard way of describing a particular subject. Describing a person's physical features from head to toe (or somewhere in between) is, for example, a standard topos of medieval and Renaissance poetry.

If these writing notes helped with your poem/story, please tag me. Or leave a link in the replies. I'd love to read them!

Literary Terms pt. 1 ⚜ More: Word Lists

[saja-star]

I know it's been a hot minute since you wrote it, but At The Bottom of the Bay is a fandom favorite fic of mine! 1, 3, 4, 9, and 11?

I am going to answer these in the order of easiest to hardest.

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

Nope, not in the slightest. I couldn’t get the movie out of my head, sat down at my computer with very little idea of what I was going to write, and typed the whole thing out straight through. I spent a couple hours editing, but no major revisions. That was a wonderful surprise for me since everything I’d ever written before had been meticulously planned out and revised many times. I didn’t think I was capable of spontaneous writing and this small success really changed the way I’ve approached writing ever since.

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

You let me win those fights, Eddie objected.

BECAUSE I LIKE YOU, it agreed.

I’m not sure if this really counts because what I like most about it is the speech tag, agreed. My favorite author, Megan Whalen Turner, has this way of writing dialogue that is rife with nuance and implication and I-know-that-you-know and coded messages and lightning quick banter and it’s all delightful, but one of my favorite dialogue techniques from her is the use of unexpected speech tags to add extra layers to a line of dialogue. Like a statement that on the surface seems unrelated to the previous statement is followed by a speech tag like “agreed” or “argued” and suddenly you see that these seemingly random unconnected statements are really an intense negotiation or a lover’s spat. I have not reached that level of mastery (rip) but I really like re-reading this line of dialogue years after I wrote it and immediately recognizing MWT’s fingerprints on my work, which was completely unconscious at the time. And I do think the speech tag here adds nuance to the line in a gentle and economical way.

Also: in a conversation that’s very solution-oriented and focused on clarity, this is a rare line where one really expresses feelings toward the other. Venom wants to figure this out because it cares about Eddie, not just because it’s afraid to lose a host. Maybe that could have been communicated better in the fic, idk, but I kind of like that it’s subtle, just a simple statement, with all that it entails.

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?

I was kind of frustrated with a lot of writing projects that had gone nowhere. I’d found that I loved writing dialogue, but hated constructing plots and getting the characters from point A to point B. When I wrote this, I had never published fanfic before and I didn’t plan to. It was very much just a “get it out of my head so I can move on” sort of thing. So I gave myself permission to just write dialogue and handwave away the rest, and at the end I found it was maybe the first thing I’d ever written that I was really happy with.

3: What’s your favorite line of narration?

I always try to resist ragging on myself in these ask memes because I feel like taking some pride in your work is kinda the point but I really don’t like the narration in this fic. I feel like my dialogue style has stayed pretty similar but my narrative style has gotten way better and it all sounds kinda clumsy and childish in retrospect. If I had to pick a favorite line I guess it would be:

It reminded him of the tediousness of wrapping presents that the recipient would just tear open anyway. It reminded him of surprise parties, and sudden hugs, and secretly doing someone’s chores for them before they got home from work.  

I am such a sucker for polysyndeton and asyndeton. I know I probably overuse them but they just! sound! so! good! Polysyndeton or asyndeton where the first two items are short and the third one is long? Chef’s kiss.

11: What do you like best about this fic?

The concepts! This was a very concept-driven fic, where I had some Ideas about how the bond would work mentally, what Venom could do physically, and how their dynamic would play out psychologically--but no story per se. So this fic is mostly just me throwing headcanons down onto the page one after another, vaguely linked together by context, and as a vehicle for headcanons I think it works rather well :P