Literary Devices

Literary Devices are tools and techniques to help you in your fiction writing, and this section will explore the more common literary devices (as well as, perhaps, some unusual ones), explain them in detail, and offer advice on their usage.

Literary devices are not tricks or manipulations; they do not involve defrauding the reader. Indeed, as per the sacred contract, you would never defraud the reader and will always play fully fair with them.

But yet, the reader wants to be manipulated in a way; they certainly want to be brought on a roller-coaster of a journey and these literary devices help you to do that very things.

Good literary devices include such techniques as using metaphors well to help the reader use what they already know as a bridge to the new world you’re sharing with them, using a good narrative hook to entice them into the story and reassure them that you will not waste the time taken to read your story, a crucible to up the ante and make sure your characters have to stay involved, foreshadowing to creative a delicious sense of anticipation for your reader, and possible an unreliable narrator to fairly manipulate and fool your reader. (Readers love to be fooled, once it’s done fairly, hence the popularity of a twist in the tale.)