Creative Writing: Introductory: Literary Devices

If you need inspiration for your next story or poem, be sure to review this list of words related to creative writing. We won't keep you in suspense: you'll learn all about plot, characterization, dialogue, and more.

Here are links to our lists in the collection: General Terms, Plot Development, Genres, Literary Devices
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. literary
    relating to or characteristic of creative writing
  2. rhetorical device
    a use of language that creates a literary effect
  3. figure of speech
    language used in a nonliteral sense
  4. trope
    a common or clichéd plot device, idea, or theme in a creative work
  5. metaphor
    a figure of speech that suggests a non-literal similarity
  6. simile
    a figure of speech expressing a resemblance between things
  7. alliteration
    use of the same consonant at the beginning of each word
  8. repetition
    the continued use of the same word or word pattern
  9. onomatopoeia
    using words that imitate the sound they denote
  10. irony
    incongruity between what is expected and what occurs
  11. dramatic irony
    when the audience understands something the characters don't
  12. foreshadowing
    the act of providing vague advance indications
  13. flashback
    a transition in a story to an earlier event or scene
  14. personification
    representing an abstract quality or idea as a human
  15. symbolism
    the practice of investing things with arbitrary meaning
  16. imagery
    the use of vivid sensory language in literature
  17. rhetorical question
    an inquiry that is not supposed to be answered
  18. parallelism
    repetition of similar or equivalent syntactic constructions
  19. apostrophe
    an address to an absent or imaginary person
  20. aside
    a line spoken by an actor not intended for others on stage
Created on Tue Jul 26 13:53:21 EDT 2022 (updated Tue Jul 26 15:02:16 EDT 2022)

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