Literary Devices Pt. 1

What are Literary Devices?

Literary devices are strategies writers use to strengthen ideas, add personality to prose, and ultimately communicate more effectively. Skilled writers use literary devices to create life-changing works of art. So who should care about literary devices?

If you want to be a charismatic, powerful writer that readers want to follow (or clients want to hire), that is. The right literary devices can make your ideas more memorable, your thoughts more clear, and your writing more powerful.

Your knowledge and skillful use of literary devices will catapult you above the hordes of wannabe writers, increasing your self-confidence, and endowing you with the influence that will keep your audience salivating to consume your work.

How are Literary Devices Different From Rhetorical Devices?

Literary devices and rhetorical devices have a good bit of overlap. They’re very similar — so similar, you’ll find a lot of confusing, conflicting information online.

Google “alliteration” and you’ll see it on lists for both rhetorical and literary devices. The same is true with “personification”, “tmesis”, “litotes”, and numerous others. So what’s the difference? Literary devices are a narrative technique. Rhetorical devices, also known as persuasive devices or stylistic devices, are a persuasion technique.

What are the 10 Most Common Literary Devices?

1. Alliteration
2. Anthropomorphism
3. Dramatic Irony
4. Euphemism
5. Flashback
6. Foreshadowing
7. Hyperbole
8. Onomatopoeia
9. Oxymoron
10. Point of View

Our Huge List of Literary Devices

You will find some recognizable names in this list. You will also find a few party crashers that (unless you were an English major) you’ve probably never heard of.

But whether it’s a familiar friend or an idiosyncratic interloper, each and every device comes with a lovingly hand-crafted definition and an enlightening example.

Here’s our list of the 57 must-know literary devices to get you started on the road to writerly stardom:

1. Alliteration – An alliteration is a literary device that features a series of words in swift succession, all starting with the same letter. Graceful and clever use of alliteration can create a pleasant musicality to writing. But note: Alliterations are a special kind of consonance, which means they must use words that start with consonant sounds. Repeated vowel sounds are known as assonance.

Example of Alliteration

Most people think of tongue twisters like “Peter Piper picked a pot of pickled peppers” when they think of alliteration. But did you know many famous writers throughout the ages have used alliteration in their titles?

• Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare.
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
• Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen.

2. Anthropomorphism – When a writer gives a non-human animal or object human-like qualities.

Example of Anthropomorphism

In Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Lumiere the candlestick, Cogsworth the clock, and the other enchanted residents of the Prince/Beast’s castle talk, walk, sing, and feel emotions just like people do.

3. Dramatic Irony – Audiences love dramatic irony, because they get to be “in the know.” They know something that the characters IN the story do not.

Example of Dramatic Irony

In Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, two men attempt to escape their responsibilities using the same fake name: Ernest. Only the audience knows the two tricksters’ real names are Jack and Algie.

4. Euphemism – The prefix “eu-” means “good” or “well,” so it makes sense that a “euphemism” is a “good way to talk about a bad thing.” Or, a “word or expression substituted for something else that is too harsh…” Like when you say your nephew “just needs a bit of practice” when he plays the violin like a tortured cat.

Example of Euphemism

Because of humanity’s understandable aversion to death, we have come up with quite a few creative ways to describe death and dying:

• Pushing up daisies
• Going the way of the dinosaur
• Kicking the bucket

5. Flashback – Scenes which show an event that happened in a character’s past, providing clues to the present story.

Example of Flashback

In Alfred Hitchcock’s famous movie Vertigo, one key flashback scene was almost cut out of the picture entirely. (SPOILER ALERT: It’s the scene where we discover that the suicidal wife is actually an actress hired to hide the wife’s murder. The actress writes a confession letter, then rips it up.)

6. Foreshadowing – The writing on the wall… A glimpse of a tombstone with your name on it… Fingernail marks scratched in blood… Not all foreshadowing is creepy, but they all warn or indicate something is coming. Perhaps foreshadowing is like the opposite of a flashback.

Example of Foreshadowing

In the classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the author Harper Lee foreshadows the last twist in the story in the very first line of the book: “When he was nearly thirteen my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.”

7. Hyperbole – An exaggeration that a hearer or reader is not supposed to take seriously.

Example of Hyperbole

The great satirist Mark Twain wrote in Old Times on the Mississippi: “I…could have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck out so far.”

8. Onomatopoeia – A word that comes from the sound it represents, such as “achoo!” or “arrgh.”

Example of Onomatopoeia

Young children’s books are the motherlode of onomatopoeia examples. Doreen Cronin’s Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type has onomatopoeia right in the title. Same with Ross MacDonald’s Achoo! Bang! Crash! And Barry Gott’s Honk! Splat! Vroom!

9. Oxymoron – A popular literary device where seemingly contradictory words are connected. Fun fact: the word “oxymoron” is itself oxymoronic — it comes from two ancient Greek words meaning “sharp and stupid.”

Example of Oxymoron

Simon and Garfunkel’s famous song “The Sounds of Silence” is a perfect oxymoron.

10. Point of View – The perspective a writer chooses when writing. In fiction, you can have a first, second, or third person point of view. First person uses pronouns like “me” or “I,” second person uses “you,” and third person uses “he/she” and looks at the character and story from the perspective of an outsider.

Note: Third person can be limited. The narrator can either only see inside the head of one character, or they can be omniscient — a Godlike narrator that can see everything going on.

Example of Point of View

In The Help, a novel about black maids in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi, the story is told from the first-person point of view of three women, looking at similar events from their own perspectives.

11. Allegory – Take a metaphor, put it on steroids, throw in a dash of realism, and you have yourself an allegory: a figure of speech used to represent a large, complex (and often moral) message about real-world events or issues.

Example of Allegory

Nothing screams “hypocritical tyrant” like fictional pigs in human clothing, declaring: “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others!”

12. Allusion – A device that the writer uses to refer, indirectly, to someone or something outside of the situation, such as a person, event, or thing in another (real or imagined) world.

Example of Allusion

In The Big Bang Theory, the names of main characters Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter allude to the real-life TV producer, Sheldon Leonard.

13. Anachronism – The time machine of literary devices. Anachronisms pop up when a writer accidentally (or purposefully) makes an error in the chronology of the writing.

It’s most often seen when writing features slang or technology that should not appear in the timeline of the story.

Example of Anachronism

In the famous “He got me invested in some kind of fruit company” scene from Forrest Gump, Forrest Gump unfolds a thank-you letter sporting Steve Job’s Apple logo.

14. Anaphora – A literary device that emphasizes a word, word group, or phrase by repeating it at the beginning of a series of clauses or sentences.

Example of Anaphora

One of the longest opening lines by Charles Dickens (which a high school English teacher once directed me to memorize) uses anaphora generously: “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…”

15. Anastrophe – A literary device that alters the normal order of English speech. Instead of subject-verb-object (“I like cats”), the sentence order becomes subject-object-verb (“I cats like”). Poets use anastrophe to make rhyming easier, and prose writers use it to sound… wiser?

Example of Anastrophe

Who can talk about anastrophe without mentioning our favorite intergalactic mentor? That’s right, Yoda’s iconic speeches are fantastic examples of anastrophe:

• “Powerful you have become”
• “Named must be your fear before banish it you can.”
• “The greatest teacher, failure is.”

16. Aphorism – A short, witty saying that delivers wisdom with a punch. But for it to be an aphorism, it has to contain a universal truth, packed into a nutshell-sized statement.

Example of Aphorism

Benjamin Franklin was a master of aphorisms. Here is a prime selection from his treasure trove:

• Little strokes fell great oaks
• Strike while the iron is hot
• Fish and visitors smell in three days

17. Archetype – The original pattern, the prototype, the ideal model for a certain character or situation.

Example of Archetype

In the epic poem, Beowulf, Grendel is the archetypal monster, a “descendant of Cain,” “creature of darkness,” and “devourer of our human kind.”

18. Asyndeton – Sometimes, a writer leaves out conjunctions like and, but, or, for, and nor. This is not because s/he is forgetful. It’s because that’s what an asyndeton is: a group of phrases with the conjunctions left out, for rhythmic emphasis.

Example of Asyndeton

Here’s Abraham Lincoln beautifully demonstrating the power of the asyndeton: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the Earth.”

(Notice the glaring omission of the word “and.”)

19. Chiasmus – The Latin word “chiasm” refers to a “crossing,” so it makes sense that a chiasmus is a literary device where words, grammar constructions, and/or concepts are “crossed,” aka reversed.

Example of Chiasmus

Apparently, early Greeks were fond of the chiasmus, or at least Socrates was: “Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.”

20. Cliffhanger – They get their name from the effect they have on readers: making them feel as if a cruel, cruel writer has left them dangling off the edge of a lonely ledge. We all know that feeling of reading WAY past our bedtime, because every chapter’s ending has us frantically flipping to discover what happens next. That’s a cliffhanger.

Example of Cliffhanger

Here’s a cliffhanger from Harry Potter: “Harry crossed to his bedroom on tiptoe, slipped inside… and turned to collapse on his bed. The trouble was, there was already someone sitting on it.”