Category Archives: A to Z Challenge

Literary Devices from A to Z – Brought to you by the letter O

 

 

 

is for Onomatopoeia

 

 

 

The term onomatopoeia describes when a word sounds like what it means. Some examples of this are hiss, bark, bang, and boom.

In my Alice Untitled YA novel, Alice finds she time travels when stressed. One of her triggers is onomatopoeia:

I’m having that dream again.

Footfalls tick in the hall, the beat slow and regular, counting down the seconds left in my life.

Click. Clack. Click. Clack.

A momentary pause outside of the grade three cloak room.

Shuffle. Spin. Click. Clack. Click. Clack.

The muzzle of the gun, shaft pointed directly at me like a dark, unblinking eye.

The flash after the trigger is pulled.

Tick, beat, click, clack, shuffle…these are examples of onomatopoeia. The use of them in a narrative helps to add the sense of sound. Rather than say he walked into the room, readers can practically hear the sound of the stranger’s footfall as he enters the room and Alice’s growing stress, foreshadowing another leap through time.

Take some time to write a passage using creative onomatopoeia. Share them in the comments below if you’d like feedback.

Literary Devices from A to Z – Brought to you by the letter N

 

 

 

is for Narrator

 

 

 

The narrator is the person who tells the story. Narrators can be protagonists of a story, secondary characters in the story, or an unnamed persona uninvolved as a character in the story.

Narrators are not to be confused with authors. Even when the narrator is the uninvolved persona, the voice is a construct created by the author and not the author him/herself. Often the narrator is reliable in that s/he tells the truth, portraying an honest version of the story being told. Sometimes, the narrator may be unreliable, spinning a story later revealed to be just that—a story and not a truthful retelling of events.

Some interesting narratives I’ve read lately include Rose Baker, the unreliable narrator of Suzanne Rindell’s The Other Typist, and Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, narrated by Death. Taking place during the early part of World War II, Death is ever-present. As a narrator, he focuses in on the characters and then pulls back to remind us he is always there, lurking in the shadows, audience to the players on the stage, waiting until just the right moment to cull their souls. Though I found this structure awkward at times, it works in the big picture when the reader learns that Death is a reliable narrator–when he says he will return for a soul when the time is right, he means it. He lulls the reader into a false sense of security, almost forgetting Death’s pledge to remove the character from the narrative and then he returns, reminding us of his presence.

Have you read any interesting, off-beat, or unreliable narratives lately? If so, share them in the comments below.

Literary Devices from A to Z – Brought to you by the letter M

 

 

 

is for Mood

 

 

 

Mood (often called “atmosphere“) is the feeling a piece of writing evokes in the reader. This is often done through narrative tone, description and setting.

After Molly finds Stanley’s body in Phase Shift, she goes into shock:

At the foot of Stanley’s driveway. In the rain.  Police offer me hot drinks and dry blankets. Refuge from the drizzle in a cruiser. They think they’re helping. Won’t help take the chill off.

Three police cars. Two fire engines. One ambulance. Yellow police tape on the property line. Surreal. Like I’m on television. A TV crime show. Waiting on the coroner. Where’s Palmer? Time passes in waves. Folds in and around itself. Inconsistent.

In this passage, the use of short sentences and sentence fragments as well as confused observations help to demonstrate the shock Molly experiences.  Because the narrative has changed in this chapter, the goal is for the reader to experience Molly’s disorientation. In this case, the mood is set using narrative tone.

If the death of Stanley represents a sort of mini-climax in the story, the chapter that follows is a falling action of sorts. The chapter begins:

The rhythmic patter of the rain on the windshield has a calming effect. In spite of the fact we’re out of the weather, I can’t help but shiver. I can sense Palmer considering me, wet puppy, licking her wounds. Stanley’s dead, my mind repeats and repeats again, needle stuck in a groove. Stanley‘s dead and I killed him. Palmer wriggles out of his overcoat and then his suit jacket. He drapes the jacket over me and wriggles back into his overcoat, gifting me his woollen warmth and spicy scent.

In this chapter, a calmer, comforting mood is evoked in the patter of the rain, and the warm comfort of Palmer’s jacket. The reader should experience a respite from the tense shock of the previous scene and be lulled by a sense of security before thrown back into the fray as the climax of the novel nears.

What novels or short stories do you remember as most effective? “The Monkey’s Paw” by WW Jacobs comes to mind for me. Record your thoughts on mood and/or atmosphere in the comments below.

Literary Devices from A to Z – Brought to you by the letter L

 

 

 

is for Lyric

 

 

 

A lyric is a song-like poem meant to express the thoughts and feelings of a person. Shakespeare’s sonnets are a form of lyric poetry.

In the short story “Aliens’ Waltz”, Josef Scheliemann describes his alien sighting using lyric prose:

Slowly move, quick box step, twirling round, open, turn. One-two-three, two-two-three. Shoulders rise. Fall again. Moving on single plain, tall and completely poised. Triangular faces showcase ovular eyes. Smoky and luminous in celestial moonlight. Fabric of dress gowns shine twinkling in the night. One-two-three, two-two-three, weightlessly promenade. Steam buoys from the wheat stalks forming nebulous mist. Feet barely skim farmland in a spiraling glide.

Though admittedly not perfect, the prose in this passage is meant to sound like a waltz. Effort was made to ensure stressed and unstressed symbols and pauses approximate the one-two-three-one-two-three time of a waltz. Ideally, because it is lyric, it should sound as if it were meant to be paired with music, such as (my favourite) “The Blue Danube Waltz”.

What do you think? Does it sound like a waltz when read out loud, or am I asking too much of the reader? Have you ever tried something similar? Was it as mind-numbingly difficult to execute as my sample lyric text?

 

Literary Devices from A to Z – Brought to you by the letter K

 

 

 

is for Katharsis

 

 

 

This is hard. Eleven days in to the challenge and I’ve already hit a brick wall. Outside of a few Japanese poetry styles, there are pretty much no literary devices beginning with the letter K. According to The Free Dictionary, the term “catharsis” is taken from the Greek “katharsis,” so today, K is for Katharsis.

Katharsis–better known as “catharsis”–means to achieve an emotional or spiritual cleansing or renewal.

In the Walking Dead episode entitled “Tempus Fugit”, both Beth and Daryl experience katharsis. In this episode, Beth decides to do something she’s never done before–get a drink. When her quest is realized, she has an emotional breakdown crying at the bar in the golf club with an unopened bottle of peach schnapps. Daryl shatters the bottle on the ground, symbolizing the end of Beth’s childhood. What follows is Beth’s spiritual and Daryl’s emotional renewal, for by the end of the episode, Beth sees herself as Daryl’s equal and Daryl is able to open up to Beth about his past. Neither character will be the same moving forward as a result of their katharses.

Kartharsis may be experienced by the audience as well. If a reader identifies with a character in a novel and feels an emotional release as a result, s/he has undergone katharsis.

Have your read or watched anything lately in which either you or the characters experienced katharsis? Share your examples of katharsis in the comments below.

Literary Devices from A to Z – Brought to you by the letter J

 

 

 

is for Juxtaposition

 

 

 

Juxtaposition is when two opposing and parallel characters, plot lines, images or themes are compared for the purpose of “etching out a character in detail, creating suspense or lending a rhetorical effect” (Literary Devices).

In The Revenant, Zulu fancies himself a modern-day superhero. The narrator draws this comparison using juxtaposition. Here’s an example:

Zulu used his super sense of sight to hone in on the man’s eyes, forehead, and nose bridge…Faster than a speeding bullet—and Zulu would have to be faster, given his distance from the man in the suit and the man’s distance from the advancing projectile—Zulu knocked the man from his feet…More powerful than a locomotive, he pulled the weapon from the man’s grip, bowed the shaft, and used the butt to shatter the window.

In this example, words from the opening narrative of the old “Superman” television series are used (“faster than a speeding bullet…more powerful than a locomotive”) to draw the comparison between Zulu’s powers and those of Superman. The comparison to Superman’s sense of sight, while not in the traditional narrative, are nevertheless well-known traits of the Superman archetype.

In a recent episode of “Revolution”, Sebastian Monroe was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Tom Neville. Scenes of this were interspersed with a simultaneous hand-to-hand combat scene between their sons, Connor and Jason. This is juxtaposed against a similar scene between “Bass” and Connor when they were pitted against each other in a fight to the death the week before.

Can you think of any juxtapositions that stand out in your mind? What were they? Did you make the connection between the two events? Did they bring another level of meaning to the story? Share your thoughts on juxtaposition below.

Literary Devices from A to Z – Brought to you by the letter I

 

 

 

is for Imagery

 

 

 

Imagery refers either to vivid, sensory description in writing or a recurring image linked to themes or symbols.

One example of the latter occurs in Macbeth when Shakespeare uses clothing imagery to show Macbeth is not up to the kingship he has stolen. When Macbeth learns he has earned the title thane of Cawdor he asks,

Why do you dress me in borrow’d robes? (I.ii)

because he has yet to learn of the former thane’s execution. Later in the play, Angus says of Macbeth,

Now does he feel his title hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief (V.ii)

to say Macbeth is not worthy of his title, alluding to his suspicion that he stole the title rather than come by it honestly.

New writers are often told to show and not tell, don’t tell your reader when a character has smiled–describe her face, the curl of her lips, the gleam of her eye, the wrinkles that form around her mouth and eyes.

In Chicken or Egg: A Love Story, Nigel learns of Paula’s death and rushes to the scene. He finds her zipped into a body bag and loaded into an ambulance. He’s told she’s in rough shape by one of the EMTs, but he’s so overcome with regret that he’d never told her of his feelings for her that he climbs into the ambulance and unzips the body bag.

The ambulance’s interior smelled of disinfectant and alcohol, an odour that began to turn Nigel’s stomach before long,..He brushed away a blood-soaked lock of hair from her forehead. It left behind a copper trail. Her skin was pale, her lips and cheeks inordinately red where her makeup had clung in spite of the blood that had left her.

In this example, the reader can recall the medicinal smell of a doctor’s office or hospital emergency room, imagine Paula lying on the stretcher, pale and bloody, hair taking on a reddish hue as the result of a fatal head wound. Nigel’s feelings for Paula are exposed when he ignores the blood caked in her hair to perform one last tender gesture.

What images do you remember reading that stuck out in your mind as a brilliant, sensory-filled description? Have you written any passages containing imagery of which you are particularly proud? Share your thoughts and comments below!

A to Z Blog Challenge – Brought to you by the letter H

 

 

 

is for Hyperbole

 

 

 

A hyperbole is an exaggeration used to emphasize a point.

In the tentatively titled,  I Am, Have Been, and Will Be Alice, Alice is depressed and has taken to her bed for comfort when her mother comes into the room:

She digs my head out from under the blankets, brushes my hair from my forehead and brings her cool lips to them. “You’re cool as a cucumber,” she says for about the millionth time in my lifetime.

The hyperbole in this excerpt is Alice insisting her mother has used this phrase about a million times over the past 14 or so years. While it’s theoretically possible for someone to achieve this goal, it’s not very likely, which is what makes it a hyperbole.

When Suzanne leans over Palmer during a sarcophagus examination in The Mummy Wore Combat Boots, he says,

As she spoke I was enveloped in a haze of her perfume. Her scent was sweet and distantly floral.  It brought back a slew of memories—not all of them disagreeable—in a dizzying flood.

While Palmer’s memories make him neither physically dizzy, and his memories would not carry the same force as a flooding tsunami, I’m sure it would feel as if they did to poor Palmer who can’t escape Suzanne’s unwanted advances in such close quarters.

Do you use hyperbole in either speech or writing? Which ones do you use most often? Which ones have you written that you’re most proud of? Whatever they are, share them in the comments below.

Literary Devices from A to Z – Brought to you by the letter G

 

 

 

is for Genre

 

 

 

Genre is used to describe types of literature. Some examples are science fiction, young adult, supernatural, thriller, adventure, and police procedural.

In the genre of science fiction, authors take current social mores and technology and project how that might change in the future. One example of this is “Star Trek” and communicators. In “Trek”, Gene Roddenberry imagined how people might communicate in the future and came up with the small, handheld devices. It’s no coincidence that when real life engineers were designing handhelds they used the communicator as a model and came up with the flip phone. Incidentally, modern smart phones appear modelled after another “Trek” device, the PADD (personal access display device).

In Phase Shift, museums on Gaia meld high and low tech in their dioramas. A description follows:

…the display was lifeless, a series of plaster casts of various skeletal remains sitting dully on a number of podiums, arranged in chronological order according to the era of each animal’s evolution.  Now, one by one, each piece of bone is animated in turn.  I watch as the first skull grows holographic muscle and skin and then rotates a full three hundred and sixty degrees on its podium.  Following that, the hologram grows a body, a three-dimensional representation of what Gaians believe the animal to have looked like when alive.  The three-D body comes away from the skull on the podium and it, too, rotates full circle.  Lastly, for its magnum opus, the hominid looks me square in the eye and takes a series of steps toward me, leaving the diorama behind.  Once more it rotates a full three hundred and sixty degrees before vanishing into thin air.  It takes almost a full five minutes for each specimen on the Gaian human evolutionary line to cycle through its trip down the runway.

When the last specimen has finished, the gallery is once more still.

Here, holographic technology is melded with a low-tech plaster diorama to create an interactive museum display. Given the state of holographic technology today, it’s not such a long stretch to assume one day the two might be joined to make history come to life for museum patrons.

The key to writing science fiction is to make it plausible. Readers should be able to imagine a future in which the technology and social structures might exist.

How many genres of literature can you think of? Write them below and I’ll compile a master list and share it in a future blog post.

 

Literary Devices from A to Z – Brought to you by the letter F

 

 

 

is for Foil

 

 

 

Foils are characters that have opposing character traits and motivations.

An example of foils from classical literature are Macbeth and Macduff from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In this example, Macbeth is driven by ambition to suit his own, selfish needs, while Macduff’s only ambition is altruistic in nature, to put the kingdom back to rights. Macduff and his wife’s relationship is a loving one, while Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s is adversarial. Macduff has a child while Macbeth has none. Macduff is allied with Malcolm while Macbeth is his enemy. These and other traits set Macbeth and Macduff up as near polar opposites in character and desire, establishing them as foils.

In The Revenant, Morgan and his brother Malchus are constructed as opposites. Morgan is the naughty child, Malchus the good one. Morgan tends his family’s farm fields while Malchus is apprenticed to the local doctor. Morgan has the gift of foresight, something he wishes would go away while Malchus actively seeks out and embraces his power in the Dark Arts. Malchus raises Zulu from the grave for nefarious means; Morgan saves him. Morgan finds a life of purpose embracing the good while Malchus loses himself in evil. For these and other reasons, the brothers are set up as having opposing personalities, desires and motivations, rendering them foils.

Can you think of any other foils in literature or television? Post your ideas in the comments below.