English writing

techniques
You can use several different writing techniques to
make your writing more engaging and exciting and
keep your audiences reading until the end of your
pieces. The list below includes just a few literary and
narrative techniques you can try the next time you’re
writing and you want to try something new.

Alliteration and assonance

To tell a tale that tantalizes the throngs, try alliteration, which refers to
using the same sound, usually a consonant, at the beginnings of words
near each other in a sentence. Conversely, assonance is the use of vowel
sounds within words near each other in a sentence, such as the long ‘e’
and ‘i’ sounds in ‘The Raven’ by Edgar Allen Poe: ‘Once upon a midnight
dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary…’

Hyperbole
Hyperbole is the best, most exciting literary technique authors can use.
Well, not really. It involves using exaggeration to make a point or get an
idea across to your reader. Have you ever heard someone say they had to
‘wait forever’ for something to happen? They were using hyperbole. We
can find an example of hyperbole in W.H. Auden’s ‘As I Walked One
Evening’: ‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you / Till China and Africa meet’.
China and Africa would never meet in the narrator’s lifetime; thus, he’s
using exaggeration to show that he will love the person he’s speaking to
for his entire lifetime.

Metaphors

For writers, finding a way to compare two things is sometimes a battle.

Luckily, they can use metaphors, which are figures of speech in which
writers describe or refer to something by mentioning something else. The
connection between the two things referred to in the metaphor might not
be readily apparent. Writers have been using metaphors to compare
things to each other for a very long time; for example, Shakespeare wrote
the famous metaphor ‘All the world’s a stage’. The world isn’t literally a
stage; he’s comparing the world to a stage on which men and women are
actors, making the line a metaphor.

Similes

Similes are like metaphors, except similes must include a connecting

word such as ‘like’ or ‘as’ (you can remember this rule by remembering
that ‘simile’ and ‘as’ both have the letter ‘s’ in them); a metaphor, on the
other hand, just says that one thing is another thing. A famous example
of a simile is from the poem ‘A Red, Red Rose’ by Robert Burns: ‘O my
luve’s like a red, red rose, / That’s newly sprung in June’.

Personification

Engaging text jumps off the page and ensnares readers. Using
personification, which involves giving a thing, idea, animal, or anything
else that isn’t human qualities that are normally associated with people
(e.g. text can’t jump). A famous example of personification comes from
E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web: ‘“You have been my friend,” replied
Charlotte, “That in itself is a tremendous thing.”’ In this book, Charlotte,
a spider, is given the human ability to speak; note that the
personification of animals is sometimes referred to as
anthropomorphism.

Foreshadowing

Many great authors have used foreshadowing, a technique in which a

writer includes hints in the text letting readers know what will happen at
the end of the story. These hints can be very clear and forthright, or they
can be exceedingly subtle. In an example of very clear foreshadowing,
JRR Tolkien included this text in his book The Hobbit, when Gandalf
tells Bilbo Baggins and his party: ‘Be good, take care of yourselves—and
DON’T LEAVE THE PATH’. Of course, Bilbo and his companions leave
the path, which readers can see coming due to the emphasis Tolkien used
in the original warning. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet includes
numerous instances of foreshadowing; as one example, we can refer to
Romeo’s line, ‘My life were better ended by their hate, than death
prorogued, wanting of thy love’. This subtly references the end of the
play, in which Romeo and Juliet both end their lives due to their family’s
efforts to keep them apart.