It’s time to vote! You’ll find everything you need down at the bottom of this post: the grid, the voting guidelines, etc. A little reminder: if you posted, please take the time to read all the entries and to vote. It’s more than a courtesy to your fellow yeah writers – we believe that this is one of the ways we all become better writers.

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I slept through most of my high school English classes, so I’m not sure what I was thinking when I agreed to write about literary devices. I remember alliteration, where there is a repetition of the same first consonant sound throughout a portion or all of the text, and metaphor, which is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object to which it is not literally applicable. But what about some other devices? What of those? It’s Google to the rescue!

Literary devices: who needs to know about that stuff?

I doubt many of us wake up in the morning with a hankering to write and think, “Well, today I’m going to use lots of deus ex machina!” What we are more likely to do is to see various literary devices in our reading and then apply them to our own work, possibly without even knowing we are doing it at the time.

But let’s pretend for a moment that you write this amazingly funny post and someone leaves a comment complimenting your use of allegory and you’re all, “What’s that now?” When people like your style, they are going to comment on it. It’s good to have at least a basic knowledge of what devices you use often so that you aren’t caught off guard when someone wants to discuss them.

No literary devices for me, yuck!

So maybe you had a nutty English teacher who was rumored to have started her career during the Lincoln administration and this teacher stomped around the classroom in sensible pumps always shouting about the Christ figure in literature. And maybe you vowed that you would never, ever, in the course of your adult life, discuss or utilize a Christ figure because she just talked about them so much it made your blood boil. Well. Guess what? There’s probably a Christ figure in that book you’re reading now or in that novel you’re working on. (Substitute any literary device for the one your lit teacher prattled on about).

The fact of the matter is that if you’re writing, you’re using devices and techniques that have been around longer than you can imagine. It’s not a bad thing. Our past, including what we read and how we were taught to appreciate the written word influence who we are as writers today.

Literary devices are fun

Or they can be. Or maybe it’s just me. In my research, I turned up some devices and techniques that I did not know were actual things. Take for example hyperbole. An old friend of mine used to say, “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times: do not exaggerate!” Hyperbole is exaggeration for the sake of emphasis.

But I got to learn a new word, adynaton, which is extreme hyperbole, It’s hyperbolic hyperbole, and I just don’t think it gets much better than that.

Saying your teacher was rumored to have started her career during the Truman administration (1949-1953) is hyperbole. Saying she started during the Lincoln administration (1861-1865) is adynaton.

When is enough enough?

Can you over use literary devices? Of course you can. Some devices, like sarcasm, can be hard to read in a piece if it’s not done just right. Not everyone has the same sense of humor and while it’s impossible to write for every reader, you can put someone off or simply confuse the reader if your use of a particular technique is not clear.

Also, I’d argue that a 1,000 word essay where every single word starts with the letter b might be a bit much as well, but that’s just me. My point is that these devices can be pervasive and make their way into our writing. Knowing they are there and knowing when to switch it up is the mark of a good writer. Take the time to read (books and essays in particular, no offense meant to blogs of course!) and broaden your skill set. It can only help you get better.

A word about cutesy stuff that’s getting old fast

These aren’t technically literary devices, but they are the kinds of things you see a lot on blogs. One example is the phrase “on the regular.” The first time I read it I thought  it was a clever way of saying “regularly.” It was a cute turn of phrase that lightened up a sentence. Wonderful! But then I started seeing it everywhere I looked. The particular blog where I first read it used it over and over again. Other people were using it. I basically saw it on the regular (see what I did there?). I began to long for the day when people just said they did things regularly.

The other one that is a personal pet peeve is the strike-through. You know, this. This was fun when it first started, but now many see it as just a distraction.

There isn’t anything wrong with either of these things necessarily, it’s just that they’ve lost any punch they once packed. There are plenty of examples of things like this and new ones will crop up all the time. It’s fine to use them once in a while, just like literary devices, but just make sure it’s not overkill. Like anything else, too much of a good thing is, well, not a good thing.

Additional resources

If you want to refresh your memory, you can read more about common literary devices here, here, and here.

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The summer supergrid is open for popular voting!

The summer supergrid crowd favorite and top row winners will be determined by popular vote. Be cautioned: yeah write isn’t an Internet clicking contest, and the votes are moderated for fairness. Read each post before voting.

Everybody gets four votes

We use scaled voting each week for the challenge grid. This week, we each get four votes because there are between 31 and 40 entries. Click on the thumbnails to read each post before voting. Click on the nifty heart-shaped voting icon to vote for the post after reading. Do not vote for your own post, please. We’ll delete your vote if you do. We’re not kidding. Trust us, it’ll be OK if you vote for other people. Need some tips on voting? Read this post.

Voting is open until Friday, 6:00 p.m. EDT & Winners announced in Sunday’s kickoff post

Once the voting ends, the challenge grid will sort itself from highest number of votes to the fewest. Ties are broken by number of page views. Until the winners’ post is published, none of the sorting will be official, but you can still get a good idea of where everyone ended up until the votes are validated.

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