Writing Style Guide: Literary Techniques

By Shruti Chandra

To keep readers motivated to read further, writers need to develop the skill of saying same things differently. Literary techniques help to achieve that. This book includes 63 stylistic devices known as tropes and schemes. Each trope and scheme is accompanied with easy explanations and several examples from famous books. Using them, you can lend oomph to your language to impress and engage others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nibiruki Books
• Release date: Oct 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301903702

Shruti Chandra

Shruti Chandra is the author of The Return to Beginnings, a novel. She has also authored many non-fiction books on fiction writing. She distributes her time between her reading, her daughter, and her writing.

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Writing Style Guide: Literary Techniques

Writing Style Guide: Literary Techniques

Shruti Chandra

Also by Shruti Chandra:

The Return to Beginnings – A novel (2014) Published by Authorspress Inc.

Begin Writing Fiction – Understanding the art and craft of fiction writing

(2010)

Writing with a Blindfold On (2015)

Planning before Writing a novel

(2012)

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Writing Style Guide: Literary Techniques

Published by Nibiruki Books

August, 2014

All rights reserved. The information published herein is for the personal use of the reader and may not be incorporated in any commercial activity. Making copies of the information in full or any portion thereof for purposes other than own use is a violation of copyright law.

This book has been written to provide assistance to those that wish to improve their writing. The content in this book has been developed by the author for educational purposes and must not be used without the author’s consent for any commercial activity. To share its content for further educational purposes, the consent of the author must be taken. Every prevention has been taken by the author to provide accurate information, but if any errors have remained, the author hold no responsibility for it.

First Edition

August, 2014

Introduction

Writing to please oneself is easier than writing to please others. When you are writing for readers or an audience, conveying your meaning in a clear and concise manner is essential. However, great writers additionally use figures of speech to amuse and interest their readers. It marks their style.

Whether your writing is expository, persuasive, descriptive, or narrative, with the knowledge of figures of speech, you can make any writing captivating.

Figures of speech are words or phrases that leave their literal meaning for effect. They are used as a writing device for emphasis, concision, clarity, rhythm, novelty, and style. Figures of speech is divided into two rhetorical devices known as tropes and schemes.

In this book, 63 tropes and schemes are explained with various examples from well-known books. You will find them useful in speech and writing, for professional and personal development. For writers of fiction, journals, news, essays, and chronicles, as well as for students, Writing Style Guide offers easy and quick understanding.

Depending upon your setting and purpose, you may use these stylistic devices to lend quality and exuberance to your writing.

Tropes

Trope is a figure of speech in which the use of a word or a phrase other than its literal meaning, changes the meaning of a sentence. The word trope comes from Greek tropos meaning turn. That is, turning the meaning of a sentence another way by the use of a word(s). There are many kinds of tropes in the English language.

Four major kinds of tropes are: -

1. Irony

2. Metonymy

3. Metaphor

4. Antanaclasis pun

Irony

Irony is a literary device in which the underlying meaning of a statement or a situation is in contrast with what is apparent. The word irony comes from Greek eirOnia in which eirOn means dissembler.

Types of Irony

1. Verbal irony

In verbal irony, a speaker says something that differs from what he means. Generally, it happens due to his ignorance of a larger context to his words of which he is not conscious.

Verbal irony in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthrone

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Dimmesdale to Hester:

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…Hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so than to hide a guilty heart through life. What can thy silence do for him, except it tempt him yea, compel him, as it were to add hypocrisy to sin . . . Take heed how thou deniest to him who, perchance, hath not the courage to grasp it for himself the bitter, but wholesome cup that is now presented to thy lips!

Later in the book we see that it is Dimmesdale predicting his future in these lines. He did ‘add hypocrisy to sin’ by staying quiet about his affair with Hester, and that he ‘hath not the courage to grasp it for himself, the bitter but wholesome cup’ due to which he suffered in silence and had to endure guilt and loneliness.

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2. Dramatic or tragic irony

Dramatic irony is used especially in plays. When a character, in ignorance, says something that has a different meaning from what he intends to express, then it is an instance of dramatic irony. Later, the character comes to know about the true nature of his actions, leading to tragedy.

Dramatic irony was mostly used in ancient Greek plays where the spectators were fully aware of the plot, intentions and situation whereas the characters weren’t. In such a setting, characters said things without knowing their larger significance.

Examples:

In Othello by Shakespeare, Othello is suspicious of his wife, Desdemona, when there is no cause for suspicion. The characters are oblivious of the truth, but the readers can see the advance of tragedy.

In Oedipus the King by Sophocles, King Oedipus unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother, which later leads to tragedy.

In Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare, Romeo kills himself after he believes that Juliet is dead.

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3. Structural irony

When an ironic voice is continued through a work by means of a narrator or a character whose viewpoint is unreliable or wrong, then it’s called structural irony.

Examples:

Jonathan Swift’s satirical essay The Modest Proposal uses structural irony.

Candide, a French satire by Voltaire, has a character named Candide, who has blind optimism, but later becomes disillusioned.

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4. Socratic irony

This is just being clever, and there is little irony in it. When a person or a character feigns ignorance to extract a secret or to expose a person, he is using Socratic irony. By using Socratic irony, you can very cleverly have a person reveal things that he intends to hide.

Examples:

Louis Theroux in television series When Louis Met… is a perfect example of Socratic irony.

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5. Cosmic Irony

If you believe that God or a Supreme Being is manipulating events or humans for fun or some other motive, then you might be knocking on Cosmic Irony. In short; you hope and God dashes them.

Examples:

A short story titled The Open Boat by Stephen Crane deals with cosmic irony.

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6. Roman irony

When someone purposely uses words that have double meaning to consciously stir a particular response in a listener or a reader, then he’s using roman irony. The difference between Socratic irony and Roman irony is that the speaker doesn’t expect the listeners to participate in the dialogue directly. That is basically for politicians or such as Antony of Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, who