The saying “there’s more than one way to skin a cat”, although gruesome from a literal standpoint, signifies the alternative ways we can do something to achieve similar results. Whether short and concise or lengthy and filled with reiteration, how we choose to convey a message ultimately depends on context.
We’ve come a long way since our first chapter on Mark Forsyth’s book The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase, but just as all good things must come to an end, let us explore the final sections on unique literary devices and how they can be applied to make your copywriting more effective!
Adynata and the impossible
Hollywood actor Tom Hanks once said in a 2016 interview that “Donald Trump will be President of the United States” when “spaceships come down filled with dinosaurs in red capes”. Obviously, he made that outrageous statement as a joke, so you can imagine his surprise when Trump was being sworn into the Oval Office.
An adynaton is something that is seemingly impossible. Like the fires of Hell freezing over, apes replacing humanity as apex creatures, or Trump being elected (again). “It’s therefore a very easy, if periphrastic, way of saying no,” describes Forsyth.
“Any negative can be transformed into an adynaton” – the most common forms being “you might as well try to…” and “not until…”. For example, if you were trying to come up with a quip for a brand of coffee:
· You might as well lug a bag of cement to work without having coffee first.
· Go to work without coffee? Not until you pry this mug from my cold, dead hands.
“Adynaton is just Greek for ‘impossible’, but that doesn’t mean that anything impossible is an adynaton, because in rhetoric adynaton, it is just a long way round of saying ‘this is the case’,” he explains. “Almost any sentence can have an adynaton added in. ‘My name is Mark Forsyth’ can become ‘If my name isn’t Mark Forsyth, may the crayfish whistle on the mountainside’.” To illustrate this, let’s try another example:
· Life without coffee is meaningless
As you can see, it’s missing the comparative element of an adynaton. To fix this, simply replace “meaningless” with an exaggerated comparison – like so:
· It’s easier to catch stars than it is to live life without coffee
· Giving up my first born is better than life without coffee
· To live without coffee is to live on land as a fish
Adynatons are very similar to metaphors, just more twisted. Treat them like the kooky uncle you meet once a year at Thanksgiving dinner and you’ll be making mad comparisons in no time!
Perplexing pronouns and prolepses
When using pronouns, standard writing conventions dictate that we should only use pronouns after identifying a subject. After introducing Robert, a woman and a Tesla electric car, we can then refer to them as he, her and it.
A prolepsis is the very opposite of this rule. “It’s perfectly natural, prolepsis. We use it all the time in conversation, but we rarely write it down,” muses Forsyth. “Somehow the rules that our teachers taught us reach out their chalky hands and stop the pen.” Perhaps we don’t see prolepses in writing often because it makes the sentence sound like the ravings of a wizened hag (or a battle cry from Mel Gibson’s Braveheart):
· It burns bright, the flames of the pyre
· They’ve come for our land, the savages!
Now, compare how the above should’ve been written normally:
· The flames of the pyre burn brightly
· The savages have come for our land!
Although grammatically correct, you’ll notice that the normal versions have significantly less oomph than their prolepsis counterparts. “The mysterious prolepsis always gives you a good line, especially a first one,” writes Forsyth as he points to the example of “Vitae Summa Brevis” by poet Ernest Dowson in 1896:
“They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate;
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses,
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.”
Using a pronoun independently is often confusing to readers, but it does have its benefits. For one, it stimulates the reader’s imagination.
It stepped into the patch of moonlight, fangs and razor claws glinting with a sinister silver sheen. The terrified hunters turned tail and fled at the sight. The tiger snorted in disapproval.
Upon reading the first clause, you automatically wonder what “it” could be. You become curious and want to continue despite knowing the sentence breaks standard writing conventions. You persevere and find out “it” must be some kind of animal from the description. Like a detective working out the clues to track down a suspect, the satisfaction created from the eureka moment is what makes prolepses such a formidable literary tool.
Of course, you don’t want to go overboard with prolepses. Otherwise you end up with clichéd detective movie openers as Forsyth illustrates here:
“There were three of them. He’d known that all along. But why had she sent them?”
Collecting with congeries
Congeries are a collection or an aggregation of something. Forsyth describes it as a list, but without any of the pizzazz. A congeries (yes, it’s a peculiar word that is both singular and plural), is an exaggerated list with “piles of adjectives or nouns” – similar to how a stereotypical 80’s Italian man in Brooklyn would describe how good his mamma’s meatballs are:
Don’t worry about it. It’s bellisomo, wonderful, outta-this-world, like Babe-Ruth-cracked-his-bat-against-the-back-of-your-head good.
Strangely enough, most people don’t talk in lists. If John had a grocery list with 50 items, he’d probably read out the first five items and then say “plus a bunch of other stuff”. Despite the unnaturalness of speaking in lists, congeries are an interesting literary device because they are unexpected. Although lists don’t tend to be very inspiring, Forsyth believes there can be exceptions as he points to Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Tree”:
“The tree was planted in the middle of a great round table, and towered high above their heads. It was brilliantly lighted by a multitude of little tapers; and everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright objects. There were rosy-cheeked dolls, hiding behind the green leaves; and there were real watches (with movable hands, at least, and an endless capacity of being wound up) dangling from innumerable twigs; there were French-polished tables, chairs, bedsteads, wardrobes, eight-day clocks, and various other articles of domestic furniture (wonderfully made, in tin, at Wolverhampton), perched among the boroughs…”
Dickens could have simply written “a tree covered in tinsel and ornaments”, but then it would’ve been perfectly ordinary. By intricately describing every detail, every facet and every follicle of the tree and its decorations, he creates a picture that readers can visualise very clearly. It’s precisely this use of imagery that separates clever congeries from long-winded lists!
Be careful when using congeries, as it wouldn’t make much sense in corporate communications or instances where conciseness is a must… it might make for an interesting ad or a blog post though! For example, if we were to write a blurb about insomnia and the benefits of a therapeutic mattress, here’s how we could do it:
· The clock says 3 AM, and yet, we are still wide awake. Thoughts racing to go to sleep, tossing and turning, simply unable to get comfortable. Limbs sprawled across the four corners of the bed, shoulders and hips crushed against the mattress, the bedsheets and covers are unhewn leather rubbing the skin raw.
It’s time to take control of our sleep. It’s time to sleep with a ZZZ-brand mattress. Stepping away from traditional steel coils and upholstery, ZZZ mattresses feature specialty foam for unrivalled cushioning and pressure relief. Let the mattress support your weight, not the other way around. Sleep easy with ZZZ, it’s easy.
The diversity and eloquence of English is as unique as the effort we put into our writing. Although striving to become the next Shakespeare might be too farfetched of a goal, simply knowing how to apply the many different writing techniques and literary devices can and will make you a star when it comes to creative copywriting. Check out some of our earlier chapters if you need a refresher course on some of the other literary tips!
Part 1 – Alliterations and assonance
Part 2 – Polyptotons, antitheses, merisms and blazons
Part 3 – Hyperbatons, anadiplosis and periodic sentences
Part 4 – Parataxis and hypotaxis
Part 5 – Diacopes and rhetorical questions
Part 6 – Hendiadyses, epistrophes and tricolons
Part 7 – Syllepses and iscolons
Part 8 – Enallages, versification and epizeuxes
Part 9 – Zeugmas and paradoxes
Part 10 – Chiasmus and catachresis
Part 11 – Litotes, metonymies and synechdoches
Part 12 – Epithets and pleonasms
Part 13 – Epanalepses, personification and hyperboles