Five Literary Devices You Should Play With Today

A healthy arsenal of literary devices is something a writer can’t be without. This isn’t only because certain elements are necessary for standard storytelling, but also because switching up your technique enriches the experience.
From tension to humor, confusion, sadness, and even outright fear, employment of literary devices is what turns plain, matter-of-fact writing into the involving narrative that fiction readers expect.
As the writer, it’s only fair you get to enjoy yourself while you work - so in that spirit, today we’re taking a look at five fun literary devices (across style, perspective, and plotting) that you should have a play with today. You’ll also find some quick, easy-to-grasp examples of these literary techniques so you can put them to similar use in your own writing. Try employing them in your next book, or even as a quick exercise to strengthen your skill with words.
You never know - having a bit of a play might set you down the path of your next great piece.
Give these devices a try, create your own examples and share them in the comments!
What Are Literary Devices in Writing?
Literary devices, also often referred to as literary techniques, are a specific selection of methods used in writing in order to deliver certain experiences for readers. Through smart use of diction - connecting words to other words in very intentional ways - the writer can set and change the tone of the writing, and influence the way in which their words are supposed to be interpreted by the reader.
These devices are a key part of compelling creative writing, because they employ literary elements that allow the writer to go beyond the standard, face-value meaning of the words they use. Having used these literary elements, the author can add an engaging character to their work, inviting readers to use their own wits and imagination so that they can become an active participant in the narrative experience.
The selection of literary devices available in writing is fairly broad, from common devices that just about every reader will be familiar with, to more obscure techniques that don’t appear particularly often outside of the more avant-garde corners of literature.
Common Literary Devices in Creative Writing
Five Literary Devices You Should Play With Today
Before we dive into our 5 uncommon picks, let’s first take a look at some of the more common literary devices readers will often encounter as they make their way through a book.
With these in mind, you can see how simple literary devices actually work: bringing literary elements together, through intelligent use of words, to adjust and manipulate what’s really being said.
Metaphor
One of the most common literary devices taught early in any creative writing class, metaphor allows the author to describe one subject as another, drawing a direct, one-to-one map based on traits, behaviors or characteristics that both things share.
As a device, metaphor is useful for taking a descriptive shortcut - helping to paint a more fully rounded idea of what the primary subject is like physically, emotionally, or simply by way of meaning - without having to spend a much longer time (and many more words) breaking down every individual element.
“The guy is a wrecking ball,” would be an example of metaphor. Using the immediate picture, the sense of impact and danger, that referring to a wrecking ball produces in the mind of the reader, the author uses few words to rapidly paint an idea of what this character may be like.
Alliteration
One of the most fun - but common - literary devices, alliteration occurs through the repetition of identical initial sounds or extremely similar syllable construction in a series of words. Alliteration is particularly easy to spot (and employ) when each word in the phrase begins with the same letter.
This device is most memorable because of its playful nature, since rhyming off a similar repeated pattern feels automatically engaging to the brain and mouth.
Alliteration often features in the world of “tongue twisters” - for example, “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.”
Read more at...
www.autocrit.com/blog/5-fun-l...
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TIMECODE:
0:00 Intro
0:24 The Unreliable Narrator
1:16 Anacoluthon
1:56 Eucatasrophe
2:57 Bathos
3:48 Frame Story
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[@blaqintellekt5981]

These videos are great and give me life

[@AutoCritEditing]

Thank you so much, we love creating them!

[@prove_it000]

This video is fantastic, thank you so much. Learnt a lot!

[@bedrizzle8139]

As a young aspiring author (I just hit 40k words on my first draft for my book!) these are so incredibly helpful. Thank you so much.

[@teacherwriterco]

These are wonderful devices. The unreliable narrator is my absolute favorite. I just wrote a short story last week that used eucatastrophe. I didn't have a name for that until your video came along. 🙂

[@ubermacv2]

Frell! I already implement all these ideas ALREADY in my writing! I'm sticking them in there instinctively! I just didn't know they were "techniques" with actual names!😲 Go figure... 🤔