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Three Fun Literary Devices to Make Your Prose Sing

Nearly 3,000 articles to
help you take your
writing to the next level! By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Developing Your Novel I'm a huge fan of Aaron Sorkin, who writes some of
Ideas and Brainstorming
the best dialogue in the business. If you’re a fan of
Story Development and
Theme The West Wing, you’ve seen a particular trio of literary
Character Development devices used in almost every speech President Bartlett
Structure and Outlining gives. Heck, you’ve heard these in almost every
Plotting
speech anyone has ever given.
Goals, Conflict , Tension,
and Stakes
Setting Anaphora, epistrophe, and symploce.
World Building
Genre What are they? (besides loads of fun):
Word Count
Series and Trilogies
Anaphora: The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses.
Writing Your Novel The most famous example is probably Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities:
Voice and Style
Dialogue and “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of
Internalization
Point of View (POV) wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the
Description epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of
Pacing Darkness.”
Foreshadowing
Flashbacks The repetition here gets you thinking about the contrasts and contradictions of the
Tone and Mood
situation and suggests that things aren’t as simple as they appear. You read on
Common Writing anticipating that things will not be what they seem, and there will likely be two sides to
Problems every story. The device creates anticipation for the reader, which sets up the story
Show vs. Tell without you having to spell it out.
Backstory
Infodumps
Hooks Epistrophe: The repetition of a word or phrase at the end of successive clauses. And to
Lack of Conflict prove literary devices don’t have to only apply to literature…
Lack of Action
 Lack of Goals I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!
Lack of Tension
Lack of Motivation The repetition here emphasizes an idea (screaming for ice cream) and can work to get
Lack of Stakes
readers on board with that idea. You hear something often enough and you start to
Stalled Stories
believe it. Another example here would be Shakespeare's famous speech from Julius
Editing Your Novel Caesar. "But Brutus is an honorable man..." Think about how often those words are
First Drafts
said, and what Antony is trying to make his audience believe.
Revision and Editing
Word Choice
Trimming Words Symploce: The combination of anaphora and epistrophe—the repetition of words or
Critiques and Feedback phrases at both the beginning and end of successive clauses. A good example here is
Shylock’s speech from The Merchant of Venice.
Selling Your Novel
Query Letters
The Synopsis
If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you
The Submission Process poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
Marketing and Promotion
Publishing The repetition here connects the speaker with the reader, forcing them to put
Self Publishing themselves in Shylocks’s shoes. It draws comparisons and gets readers thinking about
The Writing Life
what’s not being said here. You think you’re different from me, but are you really?
Being a Writer
Motivation and (Here's more on creating a strong rhythm in your prose)
Productivity

Regular Columns
How They Do It
Indie Author Series
The Writer's Life
WIP Diagnostics
Follow @Janice_Hardy
To see a strong example of all of this in action, let’s take a peek at one of my favorite
speeches from The West Wing (video at the end for those who want to hear it. The last
bit is a special treat just for us writers, one writer talking to another):
More than any time in recent history, America's destiny is not of our own
choosing. We did not seek, nor did we provoke, an assault on our freedom
and our way of life. We did not expect, nor did we invite, a confrontation
with evil. Yet the true measure of a people's strength is how they rise to
master that moment when it does arrive.

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Forty-four people were killed a couple of hours ago at Kennison State
University. Three swimmers from the men's team were killed and two others
10 Traits of
a Strong are in critical condition. When, after having heard the explosion from their
Antagonist practice facility, they ran into the fire to help get people out. Ran into the
By Janice fire.
Hardy,
@Janice_Ha
rdy I love villains. And The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels tonight. They're our
anti-heroes. I even love students and our teachers and our parents and our friends. The streets of
natural disasters that heaven are too crowded with angels, but every time we think we have
don't care one way or the
other ... measured our capacity to meet a challenge, we look up and we're reminded
that that capacity may well be limitless. This is a time for American heroes.
What You We will do what is hard. We will achieve what is great. This is a time for
Should American heroes and we reach for the stars.
Know About
the Three
Act
Structure
By Janice Hardy,
@Janice_Hardy Story
The West Wing - 20 Hours in America Speech
structure is a useful tool
for developing and
writing a novel. The first
time I learned about
story st...

10 Signs of
a Great
Protagonist
By Janice
Hardy,
@Janice_Ha
rdy At the heart of every
story is a person with a
problem, and the more
compelling that person
is, the better th...

5 Common If you can read/watch that without tearing up, you’re a tougher person than I. The
Problems
sheer beauty of the words reaches into you and drags the emotion out. It puts you in
With
Middles the shoes of those who risked all to help others. It makes you think about what you
By Janice would do and how you fit into this greater idea of American Heroes.
Hardy,
@Janice_Hardy The
Let’s look closer at the specific areas that use these devices and why they work so well:
middle is where most of
a novel happens, which
is why they're often so We did not seek, nor did we provoke, an assault on our freedom and our
difficult to write. F... way of life. We did not expect, nor did we invite, a confrontation with evil.

The Inner The lyrical quality of this is soothing, yet the ideas are harsh, and the contrast plays off
Struggle: each other magnificently. “Assault on our freedom, confrontation with evil”—strong
Guides for
Using
terms balanced by the poetic “we did not seek…we did not expect…” introductions. It’s
Internal just not the same if you write it like:
Conflict That Make Sense We didn’t seek or provoke an assault on our freedom and our way of life.
By Janice Hardy, We never expected, nor did we invite, a confrontation with evil.
@Janice_Hardy Here’s an
easy way to develop
It dies. The music, the inspiration, is gone. This version even feels clunky.
character arcs in your
novel. Years ago, I sat in
on an amazing workshop The repetition can also be used to emphasize and make a point. Though it doesn’t show
at an ... here, there’s actually a pause between “out” and “ran” in the speech that gives it even
more oomph.
4 Mistakes
that Doom
the First …they ran into the fire to help get people out. Ran into the fire.
Page of
Your The pause and repetition invites you to think for a moment what this means. People put
Manuscript themselves in harm's way and risked death to save others. The truth of it stands out
By Janice Hardy, without banging you over the head with it. The subtly of what’s not said is what speaks
@Janice_Hardy Your
novel’s first page is the volumes.
last chance you get to
hook your reader. Writing The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels tonight. They're our
your first page might be students and our teachers and our parents and our friends. The streets of
one ...
heaven are too crowded with angels…

What a beautiful way to say people died. Good people, heroes, those who ran into the
Broken, but fire to save others. It not only reads well here, it draws back to those earlier emotions
Still Good:
3 Ways to
and layers them on top of the idea that people are dead. We know why the streets of
Create heaven are crowded. The repetition of our our our reminds us that we’re all in this
Character together. This tragedy did not happen to strangers, but to us.
Flaws
By Janice Hardy, This is a time for American heroes. We will do what is hard. We will achieve
@Janice_Hardy Choose what is great. This is a time for American heroes and we reach for the stars.
the right flaws and
weaknesses to round out
your characters. There's Again, the subtly here is what makes this sing. We’ve already seen what is hard and
an old saying: "I'm ... what is great, and this calls back on all the emotions already stirred by the previous
statements (and I’m not even counting the other text in this speech that goes into more
Do You details). It ends with punch and a sense of hope, and even better, it’s active. Not we will
Have Too
Much reach for the stars, but we reach.
Dialogue?
By Janice Not every novel is going to have an opportunity for an amazing speech, but when we
Hardy, look at how the cadence of our words hits a reader’s ear, we can turn our prose for
@Janice_Hardy I
received a lot of fantastic stating information to evoking emotion. We can emphasize without being obvious. We
questions on Friday, so I can establish ideas we want readers to remember. We can connect those ideas and
have plenty of topics to show relationships between concepts.
keep me busy this
month,...
(Here's more on how word rhythm affects writing)
At-Home
Workshop: Instead of saying the water dripped onto the porch, maybe it dripped, dripped, dripped.
Revise Your Perhaps an internal struggle by the protagonist is a little more poetic. Our descriptions
Novel in 31
Days might benefit from a repeated phrase at the right time for a strong emotional impact.
By Janice
Hardy, @Janice_Hardy While we don’t want to repeat things for the sake of repeating them, there are times
Welcome to the home where a passage can gain emotional weight by hearing the same thing more than once.
page for the Month-Long
At-Home Revision
Workshop. If this is the I’ll leave you with this, from the same episode:
first you're he...
MALLORY: Nice job on the speech.
Expect the
Unexpected
: Creating SAM: What makes you think I wrote it?
Plot Twists
By Janice MALLORY: "We did not seek nor did we provoke..." "We did not expect nor did we
Hardy,
@Janice_Hardy I'm up invite..."
against a deadline this
month to get a SAM: A little thing called cadence.
manuscript finished, so
I'm dipping into the
archi... MALLORY: It works for you.

It works for all of us.

Find out more about show, don't tell in my book, Understanding Show, Don't
Tell (And Really Getting It).

With in-depth analysis, Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It) teaches
you how to spot told prose in your writing, and discover why common advice on how to
fix it doesn't always work. It also explores aspects of writing that aren’t technically
telling, but are connected to told prose and can make prose feel told, such as
infodumps, description, and backstory.

This book will help you:

Understand when to tell and when to show
Spot common red flag words often found in told prose
Learn why one single rule doesn't apply to all books
 Determine how much telling is acceptable in your writing
Fix stale or flat prose holding your writing back
Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It) is more
than just advice on what to do and what not to do—it’s a down
and dirty examination and analysis of how show, don’t tell
works, so you can adapt the “rules” to whatever style or genre
you’re writing. By the end of this book, you’ll have a solid
understanding of show, don’t tell and the ability to use it without
fear or frustration.

Available in paperback and ebook formats.

Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the teen fantasy

trilogy The Healing Wars, including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and
Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. The Shifter, was
chosen for the 2014 list of "Ten Books All Young Georgians
Should Read" from the Georgia Center for the Book.

She also writes the Grace Harper urban fantasy series for adults
under the name, J.T. Hardy.

When she's not writing novels, she's teaching other writers how
to improve their craft. She's the founder of Fiction University
and has written multiple books on writing.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble |

iTunes | Indie Bound

Labels: p, rhythm, t, tips and tricks, w, word choice

12 comments:

Marilynn Byerly 6/10/2015 11:27 AM

The King James BIBLE is the major source of these literary devices for many writers, and
one of the reasons that they permeate great Southern literature like the works of
Faulkner and the speeches of ministers like Martin Luther King, Jr.

Reply

Replies

Janice Hardy 6/10/2015 2:52 PM

Interesting.

Reply
Anonymous 6/10/2015 12:05 PM

Thank you so much for this valuable post! Now I understand what made some of my
writing sound so smooth and some of it awfully clunky. I'm definitely taking a look back
at your other posts on rhythm.

Reply

Replies

Janice Hardy 6/10/2015 2:53 PM

Glad this made a few light bulbs go off :)

Reply

Carol Baldwin 6/10/2015 12:34 PM

Nice. More than nice. Even greater than nice! I don't think I nailed it…but I tried.
Interesting comment, Marilynn. Do believe you're right.

Reply

Replies

Janice Hardy 6/10/2015 2:53 PM

LOL Works for me.

Reply

Unknown 6/10/2015 1:54 PM

I've never watched that show, but I did tear up at reading that speech. Especially loved
the part about angels. What a poetic way to describe death.

Reply

Replies

Janice Hardy 6/10/2015 2:53 PM

It's a brilliant show, and that episode is one of the best.

Reply
 Unknown 6/12/2015 9:20 AM

This speech is so inspirational!I actually favorited the video,because it helps me with

what I'm going through lately.I've set a challenge for myself and there are times that I
second guess myself.The speech made me emotional not only because these beautiful
words made me feel what the speaker wanted me to feel but it also meant sth to me on
a more personal level.We need to remember that readers may not relate to the external
circumstances of a character's life,but they will relate to his personal journey.We all feel
the same emotions and what makes us different is our choices.Each word has power.

Reply

Replies

Janice Hardy 6/25/2015 12:40 PM

Excellent point.

Reply

Joanne Roberts 6/12/2015 11:18 AM

Catching up on my mail and just had to comment. Thanks for sharing this cool clip. I
adore my copy of Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric. I bought it for myself 2
Christmases ago because I knew no one else would buy it for me. Yeah. I'm that kind of
grammar geek. Thanks again.

Reply

Replies

Janice Hardy 6/25/2015 12:40 PM

Glad you enjoyed it

Reply

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