Literary Techniques, or What Writers Can't Do Without

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Literary devices have been widely used at all times, not only by classics or authors of works of art, but also by marketers, poets and even ordinary people to more vividly recreate the story being told. Without them, it will not be possible to add liveliness to prose, poetry or an ordinary sentence, they decorate and allow you to feel as accurately as possible what the narrator wanted to convey to us.

Any work, regardless of its size or artistic direction, is based not only on the peculiarities of the language, but also directly on the poetic sound. This does not mean at all that certain information should be conveyed in rhymes. It needs to be soft and beautiful, to flow like poetry.

Of course, literary artistic techniques are quite different from those that people use in everyday life. An ordinary person, as a rule, will not choose words, he will give out such a comparison, metaphor or, for example, an epithet that will help him explain something faster. As for the authors, they do it more beautifully, sometimes eventoo pretentious, but only when the work as a whole or its individual character in particular requires it.

Literary devices, examples and explanation

Tricks	Explanation	Examples
Epithet	A word that defines an object or action, while emphasizing its characteristic property.	"A convincingly false story" (A. K. Tolstoy)
Comparison	Figurative expressions that connect two different objects with some common features.	"It's not the grass that leans to the ground - a mother yearns for her dead son"
Metaphor	An expression that is transferred from one object to another according to the principle of similarity. At the same time, a specific action or adjective is unusual for the second subject.	"Snow lies", "The moon pours light"
Incarnation	Attributing certain human feelings, emotions or actions to an object to which they do not belong.	"The sky is crying", "It's raining"
Irony	A mockery that usually reveals a meaning that contradicts the real one.	Perfect example - "Dead Souls" (Gogol)
Allusion	The use of elements in a work that indicate another text, action or historical facts. Most often used in foreign literature.	From the Russianswriters most successfully uses the allusion Akunin. For example, in his novel "The whole world is a theater" there is a reference to the theatrical production of "Poor Liza" (Karamzin)
Repeat	A word or phrase that is repeated multiple times in the same sentence.	"Fight my boy, fight and become a man" (Lawrence)
Pun	Several words in one sentence that sound similar.	"He is an apostle, and I am a dumbass" (Vysotsky)
Aphorism	A short saying that contains a generalizing philosophical conclusion.	At the moment, phrases from many works of classical literature have become aphorisms. "A rose smells like a rose, call it a rose or not" (Shakespeare)
Parallel constructions	A cumbersome sentence that allows readers to form an associative link.	Most often used in advertising slogans. "Mars. Everything will be in chocolate"
Float expressions	Universal epigraphs used by schoolchildren when writing essays.	Most often used in advertising slogans. "We will change lives for the better"
Contamination	Composing one word from two different ones.	Most often used in advertising slogans. "FANTASTIC bottle"

Summarize

Thus, literary devices are so diverse that authors have a wide scope for their use. It should be noted that excessive passion for these elements will not make a beautiful work. It is necessary to be discreet in their use in order to make the reading smooth and soft.

It should be said about one more function that literary devices have. It lies in the fact that only with the help of them it is often possible to revive the character, create the necessary atmosphere, which is quite difficult without visual effects. However, in this case, you should not be zealous, because when the intrigue grows, but the denouement does not approach, the reader will certainly begin to look ahead with his eyes in order to calm himself. In order to learn how to masterfully use literary techniques, you need to familiarize yourself with the works of authors who already know how to do it.