Repetition

This month I'm participating in the A to Z Blogger's Challenge, found here. Every day of April (except for Sundays), we are posting a blog with the theme of A to Z.

R is for Repetition.

There are many forms of repetition. Only some which I will address in this post.

I think when most people consider repetition, they think of the bad form. This is where a usually inexperienced writer will reuse the same word because they don't have the vocabulary needed to avoid doing so. This repetition can be distracting and frustrating to the reader.

But there are other kinds of repetition; repetition which adds drama and evokes stronger emotions in the reader, repetition which acts as a rhetorical device.

1. Alliteration, or Repetition of Sounds:

This is the repetition of one letter sound. It is closely related to onomatopoeias (see my recent O is for Onomatopoeias post), where the repetition of the sound is used to suggest the subject. "A spitting snake" would evoke a snake's hiss by the "s" sounds in spitting and snake. Thus it could be called both an onomatopoeia and an alliteration.

"I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street"

Acquainted With the Night, Robert Frost

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

2. Anadiplosis, or Repetition of a word that ends one clause and begins the next:

"My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain." William Shakespeare, Richard III, V, iii

3. Anaphora, or Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of each clause:

Charles Dickens has perhaps the best examples of this that I can come up with right now. They send chills down my spine every time I read them, too.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities first line 


"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities last line

4. Epanalepsis, or Repetition at the end of a clause that which was at the beginning:

"Blood hath bought blood, and blows have answer'd blows." William Shakespeare, King John, II, I

5. Parallelism, or Repetition of sentence structure:

This would be where several sentences in a row begin with the same phrase in order to draw emphasis to it.

It's perhaps easiest to see in poetry, so I've chosen some examples from a couple of famous poems to show this.

"With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
We could nor laugh nor wail;
Through utter drought all dumb we stood!
I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,
And cried, A sail! a sail!

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
Agape they heard me call:
Gramercy! they for joy did grin,
And all at once their breath drew in,
As they were drinking all.

…

`I fear thee, ancient Mariner!
I fear thy skinny hand!
And thou art long, and lank, and brown,
As is the ribbed sea-sand.

I fear thee and thy glittering eye,
And thy skinny hand, so brown.' -
"Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest!
This body dropped not down."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner

For another example, check out John F. Kennedy's famous, "Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You," speech here.

6. Repetition of a single word:

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

John F. Kennedy, Inaugural address, 20 January 1961

Do you like repetition? I'd love to hear what you think about this rhetorical device! Leave a comment below!

~I.E.

Quotes

This month I'm participating in the A to Z Blogger's Challenge, found here. Every day of April (except for Sundays), we are posting a blog with the theme of A to Z.

Q is for Quotes.

More specifically, one quote: 

"Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia."  ~E.L. Doctorow

This is one of my all time favorite quotes about writing.

As a writer, I have a thousand little voices in my head. As I go through my day, I am bombarded with voices. I see a car on the road driving recklessly, and I think that would be a great scene in a novel. I'm in a coffee shop and I overhear someone talking about their son who is in jail, and I think there's my next plot.

According to PubMed:

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that makes it hard to:

• Tell the difference between what is real and not real 
• Think clearly 
• Have normal emotional responses 
• Act normally in social situations 

At first, you may have the following symptoms:

• Irritable or tense feeling 
• Trouble concentrating 
• Trouble sleeping 

Disorganized schizophrenia symptoms may include:

• Childlike behavior 
• Problems thinking and explaining your ideas clearly 
• Showing little emotion 

Writing, at times, feels like schizophrenia. You've got a million voices telling you what to write and what to do. It's impossible to concentrate on any one thing. You react abnormally to a social situation because you're thinking about how your character would react in that situation instead. When you lay down to sleep, your mind runs full speed ahead. You're distanced from the world, alone in your fictional one, and yet when you sit down to write, you have trouble communicating your ideas clearly.

Sometimes it's so easy to get caught up in the haphazard world of writing and surrender ourselves to it. But it's important to recognize that this is the life of a writer. As a writer, you seek the story in your head in its entirety. You want that little voice to become a loud, obnoxious voice clamoring for escape until it emerges, like Athena from Zeus' head: fully grown and authoritative. And a writer won't stop until it is. Because only that can silence the voice.

~I.E.

Perfectionism

This month I'm participating in the A to Z Blogger's Challenge, found here. Every day of April (except for Sundays), we are posting a blog with the theme of A to Z.

P is for Perfectionism.

The bane of my existence. At least in writing. 

There are many things I attempt to do well in my life, and some of them I care more about than others. So it only seems apt that in writing I attempt perfectionism more than anywhere else. And thus, I struggle with perfectionism in my writing like I don't anywhere else in my life.

I think people tend to try harder at things they 1) find interesting and 2) are passionate about. Therefore, as writing is one of my great passions, I find it both interesting and am passionate about it. And, unfortunately, that's where perfectionism comes in. 

There are a lot of ways I could take this post on perfectionism. I could discuss the ways to irradicate it in your life. I could discuss techniques to avoid perfectionism or how futile it is to try to be perfect. But I'm not going to discuss any of those. Instead, I'm going to embrace perfectionism. (To a degree.)

When you care so much about something, you struggle to perform well. at the best of your ability. flawlessly. If you're passionate about cars and restoring old cars, you're going to put a lot of time and effort into restoring that car. You'll spend hours upon hours fine-tuning the engine, picking the right shade of paint and making sure every inch of that car shines before you drive it to a car show and ask others to admire it.

That's how I am with my writing. A to Z has been both a blessing and a curse. It's so much pressure for a perfectionist to turn out something worth reading every day (not that everything I've written this April has been worth reading). So I feel the pressure of not only coming up with an appropriate topic, with the appropriate letter theme, but also with writing something coherent and worth reading on said topic. And then posting a piece that I'm not pleased with on the Internet? For all to see? Some days, that's taken about as much courage as I can muster.

But A to Z has been a blessing, too. In some ways, I've shaken off my perfectionism and realized that even an imperfect thought has value. I've connected with people I've never met before over my imperfect thoughts. And how cool is that?

Allow me to be honest. I'm one of those people who finishes tasks early, then sits on them for as long as possible, making tiny changes here and there, just in the hopes of making it perfect before it's finally due. And really, who am I kidding? At least in writing, there will never be a perfect piece.

Well, let me take that back. In writing, it's the imperfections which can often make a piece worth it.

What do I mean by that? Life is full of imperfections. And it's only fair that fiction should also be full of imperfections. Not imperfect plots, not imperfect pacing, not imperfect point of views. But imperfect people. 

Life is characterized by imperfect people making imperfect decisions. So while I'm trying to craft a perfect sentence (because I remain unapologetically a perfectionist like that), I'm also trying to remind myself that life is imperfect. In dialogue, an imperfect sentence may very well speak to the characterization of the speaker. Its imperfections could tell a great deal more about the speaker than I ever could in a page of narration. And the reader will understand that.

Because while I'm stuck trying to have the illusive/nonexistent perfect piece of prose, my imperfect reader is sitting there with the book in their hand thinking, "I'm so glad this character isn't perfect. I'm so glad they made the wrong choice here--I would do the same thing, even though it's stupid."

Above perfect grammar and perfect plots, I want perfectly imperfect people in my novels. Because readers often connect with characters above all.

What do you think? Does perfectionism inhibit you?

~I.E.

Onomatopoeias

This month I'm participating in the A to Z Blogger's Challenge, found here. Every day of April (except for Sundays), we are posting a blog with the theme of A to Z.

O is for Onomatopoeia 

Today I wanted to talk about onomatopoeias (pronunciation: änəˌmatəˈpēə). If that's not a fun and totally underutilized word to say, I don't know what is.

An onomatopoeia is a word which sounds like what it is. Officially it is, "the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named." 

Many common onomatopoeias are animal sounds. Bzzz, oink, cuckoo, ribbit, meow, etc. All these are spellings of what the sound sounds like. Non-animal onomatopoeias would be snap, crack, sizzle, splat, tapping, rapping, etc. 

The nice thing about onomatopoeias is that they paint an immediate picture in your mind about the sound. What does "oink" suggest to you? You'd be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't think of a pig.

In literature, words like buzz, snap, sizzle, etc. are all used frequently. Like an animal sound, they immediately offer the reader a metal image of what is happening on the page, an auditory image if you will. If you read, "knocked," you're probably thinking of someone knocking on a door, or a branch knocking against the house. That's because of the onomatopoeia essence of the word.

These can be incredibly valuable words to choose when writing fiction. They can also be some of the most annoying.

Personally, when I'm deep into reading a book and dialogue or narrative is broken by a two word sentence of: "Knock-knock!" I find the entire paragraph skip-worthy. It jerks me from the story I'm reading in order to interject an unneeded "sound"--a sound which comes off as "telling." Not to say that onomatopoeias are not useful or never appropriate. In fact, that jerking from the story may be exactly what the author intends--as the character is jerked from their daily life by a knock, so are you jerked out of the story.

But personally, I'd rather read something like, "The knock on the door had me jumping out of my skin." You still read the onomatopoeia, but you aren't jerked from the story in order to do so. Instead, it gently informs you of the auditory image in your mind, and you feel the tremble running under the character's skin from her surprise.

What are your feelings about onomatopoeias? How do you prefer to read them?

Examples:

Onomatopoeias are used in some of the most well-known poems and by the most well-known authors.

Nursery Rhyme Examples:

Baa Baa Black Sheep

Old MacDonald had a farm

Ee i ee i oh!

And on that farm he had some chickens,

Ee i ee i oh!

With a cluck-cluck here,

And a cluck-cluck there

Poetry Examples:

Edgar Allen Poe

The Bells

Hear the sledges with the bells - 

Silver bells!

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!

How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,

In the icy air of night!

While the stars that oversprinkle

All the heavens seem to twinkle

With a crystalline delight;

Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells

From the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells - 

From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Morte D'Arthur

"I heard the ripple washing in the reeds, [5]

  And the wild water lapping on the crag."

~I.E.

NaNoWriMo

This month I'm participating in the A to Z Blogger's Challenge, found here. Every day of April (except for Sundays), we are posting a blog with the theme of A to Z.

"N" is for NaNoWriMo.

NaNoWriMo stands for "National Novel Writing Month." Traditionally, this refers to November, where wannabe authors attempt to pound out 50,000 words in 30 days. It's a frantic attempt to write a novel in a month (well, more like a novella).

I've blogged about NaNoWriMo (NaNo for short) before, and "won" it twice now. This

month happens to be one of the Camp NaNoWriMo months. April and July are both Camp NaNo months, but this is my first year participating in the Camp version. The awesome thing about Camp NaNo is that it's a little less pressure. Or, it could be even more pressure! That's because you can adjust your goal word count for the Camp NaNo months.

The default word count for Camp NaNo is 50,000 like for the traditional November NaNoWriMo. This time, I've left my word count alone, as 50K is a reasonable goal. It averages out to 1667 words a day, and that's plenty ambitious, especially if you have other things going on.

I'm a fast typist, so it's not writing the words down which challenges me. (I can accomplish my goal in an hour if I'm properly motivated.) The problem is coming up with ideas for the next scene. The past few days have been challenging, and I ended up with only 764 words for the past three days (Yikes, that puts me behind!).

Since I scheduled my April to give myself the weekends off, I didn't feel too bad. Until yesterday. Yesterday, I started off trying to get some editing done on a different WIP, and that was a big mistake. Instead of getting very far with that, I ended up spending about two hours editing less than 2000 words. And the rest of the day got way too busy too quickly to even think about Camp NaNo. Ugh. Can you say "guilt?"

But in my experience with NaNo events, there will always be days where life gets in the way. There will be days where other things slip to the front of the line, whether or not they deserve to be there. And then you're left wondering where the day went and how to catch up on my word count that I haven't achieved. 

When low word count days occur, or even days where I'm not able to write at all, instead of getting discouraged and wanting to give up, I only need to readjust my goals. Whereas my daily goal for Monday through Friday was 2272, it's now slightly higher at 2584. If that becomes too much for one day, I know that I can take a Saturday or Sunday and punch out a few more words in order to catch up.

Another option is to focus on the weekly word goal (which works out to 12,500 words a week) instead getting overly concerned with the daily goal. If I can't reach my daily goal for one reason or another, I just look ahead to the weekly goal and work towards that. There are always days where I'm more productive than others, and often when I am up against seemingly insurmountable odds, I find a reserve of motivation and strength inside to continue.

Even if I don't "win" (as in reach the 50K word goal for the month), I have a significant chunk of a new novel started. And that's well worth the effort.


~I.E.

Linking Your Novel Together

As we wind down on Week 2 of the A to Z blogger's challenge, I find myself struggling through a severe head cold and trying to string two coherent sentences together. So for my "L," I came up with "links."

A well-written novel must be linked. And what do I mean by links? 

Well, if you think about the link of a chain, each one connects with two other links, one before and one after. The only two links which do not connect to two others are the beginning and end. But each link is soldered together to make running your hand over it smooth. 

For a novel, this means each scene is a link. And your entire story should be linked together so that it reads smoothly. It should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, all of which seamlessly flow into the other.

Each link serves its purpose to string the plot from beginning to end. No scene should be so abrupt that it causes the reader's attention to snag. Each scene should naturally follow the prior one. In other words, each scene needs to build on the information, characters, plot, themes of the one before. If a scene doesn't advance one or all of these, it might need to be revised or eliminated completely.

Each scene should: 

1. Establish when (time);
2. Establish where (setting);
3. Establish who (character or point-of-view);
4. Advance why we're reading (the plot);
5. Make it clear what the character(s) want;
6. Have conflict;
7. Start as late as possible in the action;
8. End as early as possible (think cliffhanger);
9. Transition us from the prior scene;
10. Transition us into the next scene.

A successful novel is one where the reader eagerly grabs a hold of the chain and, link-by-link, works his way from the beginning to the end. He isn't snagged at any one link, he doesn't stumble or want to put the book down. It's a difficult thing to do, but it's what every writer should aim for in their novel. (It's almost as difficult as making this metaphor work.)

~I.E.

Knots

Life is full of knots. Those kinks in the rope of life which interfere with your goals. Every time the rope begins to run quickly through your hands, your fingers catch on a knot. Each knot is a different size, a unique challenge. Some force you to unknot them before you can continue, while some are mere snags in the rope.

In the same way, literature is full of knots. Or, it should be. Every time a character's life seems to be going well, every time the character is getting what she wants, she should have her rope knotted. The knots should be varied in size, big, small, in-between. Some should require stopping, or turning back, while others should be more easily overcome.

There are a million different types of knots to throw at your characters--sailor knots, decorative knots, climbing knots, etc.--and each has their own level of complexity. It's up to the author to determine how complex a character's knot should be. In a novel, they should not only be varied in size, but unevenly spaced.

When a novel's storyline is successfully scattered with knots, it is full of twists, turns and cliff-hangers. Knots are what keep the reader reading. Knots are what show the reader the real character.

And because my current knot is in the form of a head cold, complete with a migraine, that's all for today.

I leave you with some pictures of cool knots and links for how to make them.

Source Animated Knots by Grog shows you how to complete these knots.

Source

Source: Animated Knots by Grog

~I.E.