The Art of Writing - Part 01

The Art of Writing

Many people write, but not all writers produce text that is really striking. The majority of writers do not aim to grasp the reader's attention and this is why most people have an aversion to reading unappealing text. Be it reports, articles, novels or even a simple essay, the extent to which the reader finds the writing interesting is directly proportional to the style of the language utilized.

What differentiates an extraordinary writer from an ordinary writer is how s/he makes use of language. Extraordinary writers have an arsenal of components that they make use of to beautify their language. This is what I'm going to share with you in this blog post.

Beautifying language

Read the two pieces of text below.

"Everybody knows that a rich man wants a wife."

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

Both texts mean the same thing, but had Jane Austen opted to use the first line instead of the second as the opener to her acclaimed novel, Pride and Prejudice, I doubt it would have been as appealing as it is.

So what's the difference between the two texts? The first one, undoubtedly states the idea in a very straightforward manner. But the second one creates an image of the entire idea in an aesthetic way, no? If you're a creative being, I'm sure you'll agree with me that the second text contain beautiful language than the first. And everybody loves to see/read/listen to that which is beautiful. 

So scroll down below to discover the techniques for constructing extraordinarily appealing text.

The Six Components

1) Music
2) Simile
3) Metaphor
4) Climax
5) Anticlimax
6) Personification

These are the 6 main components to wildly successful writing. Master them, and writing fantastically will be second nature.

In this topic, I will only focus on how Music can be used to beautify language, the others, I aim to discuss in another blog post soon.

1) Music

 

    Music is divided into three sub-components,rhymes, vowels and consonants and alliterations.

Rhymes

Usage of rhyming words tend to create something similar to music that we hear. Choruses in songs and lyrics usually contain rhyming words. 

         "There she goes, like a shooting ,with her body shape like a rock guitar"

          "The ice was here, the ice was there."

This type of language is mainly used in poetry but can be put to effective use between long lines of text to  relieve the reader from exhaustion. 

Vowels and consonant sounds 

The vowels, A,E,I,O,U create sounds. Unlike rhyming words where the rhyme creates the musical effect, vowels and consonants give rise to music by phonetics. 

           "The murmurous haunt of flies on summer's eve."

           "The vampire, done with sucking blood, slurped the dribbling drops from the woman's neck."

Alliteration

This is using the same consonant sound over and over again.

Alliterations are commonly used even without our knowledge sometimes. Whenever this component is used, the same syllable is stressed several times in a sentence thus creating another musical effect.

            "She sells sea shells on the sea shore." - 's' sound stressed

            "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers." - 'p' sound stressed

     

Stay tuned to LXA for the second part of this blog