The last four on that list are definitely things to make sure to purge during proofreading. I can give you some examples of things to improve the first point there, and tack on some related literary devices most people use but don't know that they use.
This list isn't in any particular order. There will be more niche stuff thrown in hapharardly next to more basic and well-known concepts. It took me a while to write, compile, and format all of this, and organizing it was too much work.
Chiasmus
I mean what I say and say what I mean.
Meaning
A chiasmus is a two-part phrase or sentence that mirrors itself, with the second phrase being a flip-flopped version of the first.
It's not required to use the exact words in both, but it keeps the grammar or ideas, just in reverse order.
For example, Walt Whitman wrote
And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them.
Notice how "tend inward" and "tend outward" swap places.
Uses
- Emphasis and Contrast
Chiasmus highlights a contrast between two things. By flipping elements, it draws attention to both, creating a clear distinction between them.
I want what I can't have and can't have what I want.
- Rhythm and Flow
The ABBA structure creates a rhythmic loop that makes a sentence or phrase catchy and memorable. It feels balanced and complete.
He loved her and she loved him.
- Clarity and Bite
The twist in chiasmus can break up complicated ideas into more bite-sized chunks. Reversing the same thing allows the reader to chew on it a little longer.
The instinct of a man is to pursue everything that flies from him, and to fly from all that pursues him. (Voltaire)
- Full-Circle Finality
Chiasmus brings ideas from the start to the end. It makes the writing feel complete and circular. An extended example of this would be a story that begins with one line and ends with the mirrored form. It's satisfying both to write and to read.
In the end, it wasn't about how much she did for him, but what he did to her.
- Illustrate Obsession
Because chiasmus involves repetition, it can give a feeling of obsession or fixation.
She can't think of it. There isn't time. There's not time to think about that right now, so she can't.
Tips for Use
- Match Structure Carefully
The two parts should mirror each other in grammar. If the first part is subject-verb-object, try to make the second part object-verb-subject (or something parallel). For example, if you start “She gave him a gift,” a chiasmus version might be “He gave her a gift in return.” Here she/he (subjects) and him/her (objects) swap, keeping the pattern. It should feel balanced.
- Keep It Simple
Don’t overcomplicate the clauses. Short, clear phrases work best. If the ideas are already simple, the reversal pops more. Short clauses are easier to follow when they flip.
- Use Synonyms or Similar Words
Remember, chiasmus doesn’t have to use the exact same words. You can use synonyms or related concepts. Shakespeare did this in Sonnet 154:
Love's fire heats water, water cools not love.
The concepts are related, but it's not an exact palindrome. Another way of doing this is:
He stares at the dog in contempt. The hound glares back with malice.
Again, the words aren't exactly the same, but the underlying idea is still obviously connected.
- Consider Rhythm
Say it aloud. Chiasmic structure should have a nice flow or pause in the middle. If it’s too long or the rhythm stumbles, trim it or simplify. Good chiasmus often has similar lengths or emphases on each half.
- Practice
Play around with it. You could write a normal sentence and then play with swapping the key words or ideas around. With practice, you’ll feel how to keep it fun and not forced.
Assonance
Screeching steel screamed in eerie defeat.
Meaning
the repetition of vowel sounds in nearby words. It's used to create flow and control the mood/tone.
Uses
Long vowels (like "oo" in the example over) slow the pace and make it mournful, lulling, and dreamy.
Shorter vowels ("It lit the slick tin with shrill little clicks") create a punchy, quick rhythm. Maybe even chaotic.
It glues your sentence together so that even though your words may not rhyme, they're linked. The sentence feels intentional and satisfying, like a completed puzzle.
Assonance is common in poetry. Unlike rhyme, though, it's subtle. Instead of screaming "this is a poem", it can fit seamlessly into lyrical prose.
Tips For Use
- Trim hard consonants.
If your sentence is filled with "k" or "f" sounds, it can dull the effect.
- Rearrange the words until it feels right.
Play around with the order of words. Putting words that share the vowel sound closer makes the assonance pop more, but don't let unnatural structures ruin the smooth feeling assonance is supposed to bring.
- Read it aloud.
If it doesn't land when spoken, it doesn't land.
Consonance
The old man hummed a calm, solemn hymn.
Meaning
While assonance is an undercurrent, consonance is more like a drumbeat. Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in a sentence or phrase. A specific kind of this would be alliteration, which focused on repeated sounds at the beginning of the words.
Uses
Repeated consonant sounds make certain words stand out in phrases. They also make the phrase more memorable, and the specific consonant sound that's repeated can evoke a certain feeling or atmosphere. Harsh, gutteral sounds ("p," "b," and "k") create tension or mimic impact while softer consonants (like "f," "v," "th," and "s") sound smoother or more textured.
Like assonance, consonance can also create subtle connections without necessarily rhyming.
Tips for Use
- Focus on the meaning.
Don't just repeat noises arbitrarily. Choose consonant sounds that relate to the meaning or feeling you're tryna convey.
- Use it sparingly.
Too much consonance can create tongue twisters and just become distracting. Don't force it into every line; the best consonance feels natural. If you find yourself straining to use a specific sound, don't.
- As always, practice.
Listen to your own writing, and write it over and over again to go insane improve.
Dissonance
Cracked glass clashed with rusted metal.
Meaning
Harsh consonant clusters that clash and create chaos— sorry, couldn't avoid the temptation for alliteration.
...
Anyway, when a sentence has dissonance, you can hear the violence. There's no softness. It's a soundscape of wreckage that sounds awful to your brain. You combine clunky consonant sounds to create a sense of wrongness and unease.
"cr" "gl" "cl" and "st" are some examples of consonant pairings that can create dissonance when combined. The goal is to arrange them in total chaos.
Uses
Life isn't always smooth. Dissonance makes a sentence more grounded in reality, forces attention, and makes the reader uncomfortable. It shocks the reader and jars them from an indifferent state.
Gnashing gravel, grinding gears, the sick split of sinew against steel.
There's a little alliteration here, but the sentence is hard to say. It feels gross— not just the word meanings, but the way the words sound.
Tips for Use
- Take caution.
Use dissonance like a landmine. Don't saturate it by overuse. One well-placed line can gut the reader.
- Balance it with the flow.
Juxtapose it with smooth lines to increase contrast. Silk around a blade.
- Let the context justify it.
Dissonance has to match the emotion. It doesn't belong in your sugary love poem— it'd be more in place if the love was toxic or in a breakup letter.
- Lean into imagery.
Jarring images, unexpected metaphors, or grotesque pairings do wonders.
Anaphora
Meaning
So, here's a good way to think of anaphora:
You begin with a phrase—
You begin with a phrase to build rhythm.
You begin with a phrase to guide attention.
You begin with a phrase to drive a point home.
If you haven't gathered, anaphora means repeating the start of successive clauses... for emphasis, for momentum, for music. It's art of repetition with purpose.
Uses
You start the same way, over and over,
You start the same way to hammer it in,
You start the same way to make it unforgettable.
(See? It's quite fun.)
It's great for writing manifestos. (Not just communist ones, either!)
Repeating the beginning of phrases sets up an expectation, and then builds tension or emotion with what follows.
Anaphora helps our brains absorb and retain ideas, similar to the way putting words to music makes them easier to remember.
Anaphora doesn’t just repeat.
Anaphora echoes.
Anaphora builds.
Anaphora demands to be heard.
Suspensive Syntax
Meaning
At the core, this is a simple concept. It's about delaying the core meaning of a sentence (whether it be the subject, verb, or object) until the very end in order to create suspense, weight, or surprise.
Its power comes from nuance. Most prose dumps the subject and verb together at the front of the sentence, which works well in many cases.
However, suspensive syntax turns your sentence into a coiled spring, holding tension until the last word. Weaponized pacing.
Uses
People crave resolution. If you open a clause or delay the main idea, our brains metaphorically lean forward in their seat.
We've got limited brain space, and when a reader isn't interested, things tend to slip by. When you delay the core of a sentence, your reader subconsciously clings to every word, trying to complete the pattern.
He told her the truth.
Stark. Brutal. Works perfectly as the gut punch single-line paragraph after something long and emotional.
But you can build tension by using suspensive syntax in the sentence before it.
What he told her— the thing she’d feared, the thing she’d run from... it shattered her.
He told her the truth.
Suspense doesn't only come from your plot. It's about how you present your plot, even at a grammatical level.
Object:
This is the easiest, most natural-feeling version of suspensive syntax. You lead with the action and don't reveal the specifics of it until the end.
He found it beneath the royal seal, buried in the last line of the letter, penned in the king’s own hand. The order for his execution.
The reader knows something is coming. Delaying the payoff makes it more satisfying to read.
Subject:
Use this one sparingly. This is like Yoda-speak, and it can be weird in a bad way when used in large amounts.
However, in limited doses, it can destabilize the reader and invoke disorientation or even dread.
In the corner of the hall, beneath the shattered stained glass, stood the child.
"The child" is the subject here, and obviously the focus of the sentence. By adding the other details in first and making the brain wait, you're drawing more attention to the subject and making it seem very important, or sinister. It's perfect for horror or anything uncanny.
Verb:
This one's trickier, but if you do it right, it sounds elegant and serene.
The princess, head held high, dress torn and streaked with ash, soot, and grime, sword dragging behind her, spoke.
The entire sentence is a slow build to that last, brutal verb. It works beautifully for dramatic entrances, reveals, or tonal pivots.
Suspensive syntax also changes the cadence of your prose. Each delay acts like a controlled inhale; the final clause is the exhale. It’s especially powerful when placed between bursts of blunt, simple prose.
He came back. He saw the child.
In the ruins of the chapel, under the saints’ broken gaze, covered in her mother’s blood—she waited.
He stepped forward.
You can feel the pacing shift. The middle line slows everything down, forcing the reader to dwell.
Suspensive syntax is basically time control. You can slow down seconds at will!
Escalating Tension
Meaning
Building tension within a sentence means structuring the sentence in a way that creates suspense, emotional escalation, or psychological pressure before the final point hits.
It’s the literary equivalent of winding up before you punch, or holding a musical note before the drop. It’s what keeps a reader breathless and wanting more, even if nothing is "happening".
Uses
Escalating tension... escalates tension. It makes your reader more interested in the story.
For an example, this is from that one noob's story (since I'm just slightly restructing part of my comment for this point):
"Maybe I can use my magic to make one. Or maybe… Gods. I know they all left, but maybe I can convince one to come back."
This is fragmented and repetitive. Each sentence sits on its own little emotional island. The repetition of "maybe" and "I" with short sentence fragments causes monotony, not tension. It’s like someone tossing pebbles one by one instead of throwing a stone with force.
This would be a better version:
"Though I had already burned one portal, though the others were lost to me, still I wondered: If I could just harness this power I'd bargained for, could I call one of the gods back?"
To break this down, I'll be using the term "clauses". This simply refers to the pieces of the sentence that make up the whole.
The first two clauses are "Though I had already burned one portal" and "though the others were lost to me". They stack together, with the second emphasizing the first in a way that doesn't directly repeat it. It's building towards something, creating tension. This sort of structure works to make the end of the sentence hit harder.
The "still I wondered" serves to provide a small break in tension, giving a moment to breathe before the final punch. It makes the effect last a little longer, drawing it out before the final escalation. Then the sentence moves on to a direct lead-in to the ending plea, "if I could just harness this power I'd bargained for". That's a bitter callback to the thing that got your narrator in this situation in the first place, and creates a natural flow into "could I call one of the gods back?", the dramatic end to this crescendo— the forte note at the end of the song.
Also an important part of sentence structuring is looking at sentences in relation to the sentences around them. Long sentences build momentum and show the spiraling thoughts of a distressed or obsessive character. Short sentences deliver the impact. So you can pair them like this:
“I didn’t mean to destroy it— not really. I only meant to weaken it, to buy time, to slow them down. But the fire caught faster than I expected. It swallowed the gate. And now it’s gone.”
The first two sentences are a little longer to show the character rationalizing. He's talking fast and trying to justify himself. The shortness of "It swallowed the gate" makes it more of a gut punch, allowing "And now it's gone" to effectively close the paragraph out with an air of stark finality.
This pattern keeps the reader emotionally engaged and reflects real patterns of thought during panic, grief, or guilt.
I'll include excalating sentence structures, too. This character is desperate, so building the desperation in every sentence would help to show the reader that and draw them in.
"Maybe I didn’t destroy it. Maybe it’s still there, buried beneath the ash, waiting. Or maybe it’s truly gone— and if that’s true, then I’m the reason paradise is closed forever."
It starts small with a short denial statement. It adds uncertainty, then shifts gears to the hard possibility before ending in self-accusation. The buildup makes the final payoff just hit harder. It's a mini character arc in one paragraph— and that's the power of srtucturing sentences!
Sentences like these allow for pauses and punches, letting some lines breathe and other lines hit hard. It keeps the reader engaged and creates a more interesting piece.
Tips for Use
- Combine sentences with conjunctions (“but,” “though,” “still”) to show tension and contradiction.
- Make complex sentences with clauses that build onto each other.
- Insert emotional modifiers to increase stakes (e.g., “this magic that took so much from me” vs. “my magic”).
- Trim redundancy: don’t say the same emotion three times with different words. Pick the sharpest way of saying it and use that.
- Use punctuation for rhythm— an em dash or ellipsis can simulate a break in thought, a shift in tone, or a moment of pause. Semicolons are also amazing. I think I do a good job of explaining the different ways of using all of that (and a few other things) pretty well in this post right here!
- Be strategic with short sentences. Use them at turning points or emotional peaks for max impact.
conclusion
I hope you find this at least somewhat useful and easy to follow. Lemme know if you've got any questions.
