From Kate’s Writing Crate…
As a
reader, I always love finding books that appeal to me. As a writer, I am twice
as pleased when the authors also provide masterclasses within their books.
Masterclasses take place when
performance artists and musicians work one-on-one with students. Writers don’t
generally have this option, but I have found some books to be masterclasses for
characters, backstories, plots, settings, voice and/or creativity.
We know
when something sounds right or wrong as we read and write, but we don’t always
know why. In The Elements of Eloquence:
Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase, Mark Forsyth (The Inky Fool blogger)
explains it all in delightful detail.
With verve
and wit, British author Forsyth illustrates figures of speech from alliteration
to zeugmas with examples from Shakespeare to Sting.
On pages
45-46:
“Hyperbaton
is when you put words in an odd order…[J.R.R.] Tolkien wrote his first story
aged seven…about a ‘green great dragon.’ He showed it to his mother who told
him…that it had to be a great green one instead.
“The
reason for Tolkien’s mistake…is that adjectives in English absolutely have to
be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun…It’s
an odd thing that every English speaker uses this list, but almost none of us
could write it out.
“…Have you ever heard that patter-pitter of
tiny feet? Or the dong-ding of a bell? Or hop-hip music? That’s because when
you repeat a word with a different vowel, the order is always I A O.”
On pages 113-114:
“Roses
are red. Violets are blue. That, at its simplest, is isocolon. Two clauses that
are grammatically parallel…Cassius Clay said ‘Float like a butterfly, sting
like a bee’…And when Rick tells Ilsa ‘Where I’m going, you can’t
follow. What I’ve got to do, you can’t be any part of…’”
Forsyth proposes there are
formulas to some of these elements that can be used to great effect in our
writing, too.
On pages 23-24:
“…in
essence antitheses are simple: first you mention one thing: then you mention
another…Oscar Wilde was the master of these, with lines like ‘The well-bred
contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.’…‘Journalism is
unreadable, and literature is not read’…
“…these
are all just plays on the basic formula…: X is Y, and not X is not Y.”
On pages 70-73:
“Diacope…is
a verbal sandwich: a word or phrase is repeated after a brief interruption. You
take two Bonds and stuff a James in the middle...a structure of A B A. But you
can extend that to A A B A …‘Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?’”
On pages
92-93:
“When
you end each sentence [or clause] with the same word [or clause], that’s epistrophe.
“This
means half the songs ever written are just extended examples…Whether it’s
Leonard Cohen ending every verse with hallelujah…[or]
When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s also epistrophe
because it always ends with amore…
“When
the music stops, epistrophe can…be…jabbing at the air for emphasis. That’s the
sort that Abraham Lincoln used when he said “government of the people, by the
people, for the people…”
Even though
I’ll never remember all 43 literary terms Forsyth illustrates, I’m now more conscious of turns of phases as I read and
write. That’s why I recommend this book: It’s both a pleasure to read and to use
for reference—a true masterclass.
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