Literary devices are essential tools used by writers to enhance their storytelling and convey complex ideas more effectively. These devices include oxymorons, which juxtapose contradictory terms to reveal deeper meanings, and metaphors, which draw direct comparisons to add depth and understanding to descriptions.
Using indirect comparison, like using "like" or "as" as verbal clues
Irony
Example: This was not typed out
A figure of speech in which words are used in such a way that their intended meaning is different from the actual meaning of the words.
Oxymoron
Example: All I know is that I know nothing
A figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction
Allusion
Example: This place is like a Garden of Eden
a brief and indirect reference to a person, place, thing or idea of historical, cultural, literary or political significance
Imagery
Example: I could hear the popping and crackling as mom dropped the bacon into the frying pan, and soon the salty, greasy smell wafted toward me.
Visually descriptive or figurative language especially descriptive or figurative language
Alliteration
Example: Slip and Slide
Where two or more words in a phrase or line of poetry share the same beginning sound
Dictation
Example: At lunch I punched John, At lunch I kicked John, At lunch I elbowed John
When describing the events of her story, an author never has just one word at her disposal.
Hyperbole
Example: He is as big as the empire state building
An exaggeration of ideas for the sake of emphasis
Flashback
Example: As he fell looked down he remembered himself as a child falling down a slide 3 meters tall
An interruption of the chronological sequence (as of a film or literary work) of an event of earlier occurrence
Foreshadowing
Stormy and wet, stormy and wet; and mud, mud, mud, deep in all the streets. Day after day, a vast heavy veil had been driving over London from the East, and it drove still, as if in the East there were an Eternity of cloud and wind. So furious had been the gusts, that high buildings in town had had the lead stripped off their roofs; and in the country, trees had been torn up, and sails of windmills carried away; and gloomy accounts had come in from the coast, of shipwreck and death. Violent blasts of rain had accompanied these rages of wind, and the day just closed as I sat down to read had been the worst of all.
A warning or dictation of the future for the viewers
Metaphor
Example: You are the light of my life
A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.