Craft of Writing: Brachyology, Shared Lines, and Congery

Hello! Here are three more Craft of Writing mini-lessons designed to support students in practising writing craft all year-round. As mentioned in previous blogs on other writing elements - here, here, here, here, and here - this approach involves covering a writing technique in a ten minute segment at the start of each lesson. Students are shown how to use a technique, alongside examples, and then put it into practice.

Brachyology / Brachylogia

What is it: A form of condensed writing or speech where a longer form of expression, be it a noun group or a figure of speech, is reduced to a much shorter version.

Examples:

• "They'll relate to it well. The Ministers. Guaranteed." - Felix in Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood
• Black: "How many would you say you read?" / White: "I've no idea" / Black: "Ball park" - The Sunset Limited by Cormac McCarthy.
  

Why use it: 

• Allows the speaker or writer to express things concisely; could denote that the speaker is working in a time-sensitive scenario.
• Representative of characters that are laconic (laid-back / chill) or characters with a high-constructed way of speaking.
• Also links to youth culture and the forging of new lexicons representative of new ideas, new ways of thinking.
  

Quick Activity: Write an internal dialogue of a character thinking through how they will perform the role of Caliban. Ensure that you include an example of brachyology to convey the actor's state of mind as they get into character.

Shared Lines

What is it: A generic convention of Shakespearean drama is to format the lines of dialogue in a way that directs the actors in how to perform them in quick succession. This is reliant on iambic pentameter, with the arrangements of shorter lines of dialogue making up the full amount of iambs.

Example:

PROSPERO: I will tell no tales.

SEBASTIAN:                            The devil speaks in him!

PROSPERO:                                                                      No.

(From The Tempest by William Shakespeare)

Why use it:

• Even though the characters are interacting and conversing with shorter lines of dialogue, the use of shared lines allows for the playwright to maintain the rhythm and poetry of blank verse.
• The formatting of shared lines assists actors in performing against and off each other's dialogue, IE. Knowing when to speak, and how quickly to speak.
• Can establish a comical interchange, or convey a confused tone due to many characters speaking almost at once.

Quick Activity: In a group of 2 or 3, create a sequence of dialogue about imprisonment. Used shared lines and then perform it.

Congery

What is it: A rhetorical device in which multiple words are used to convey the same idea or meaning. Congery is related to the technique 'tautology', in which two words that mean the same thing are unnecessarily used together.

Examples: (all from Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood)

• "How he has fallen. How deflated. How reduced."
• "Ejected! Tumbled out! Discarded!"
• "When you walk in here, you shed your daily self. You become a clean slate. Then you draw on a new face."

Why use it:

• Can be used to emphasise a point by revisiting the same idea in multiple ways.
• Helps to effectively build characterisation through the establishment of a specific kind of voice or vocal inflection used in everyday conversation.
• Features as a persuasive device; the repetition of a point through the use of wide vocabulary is designed to appeal to a wide audience - IE. If one articulation of the idea doesn't make its impact on one particular person, then another version might.

Quick Activity: Write a short argument, using congery, that expresses your feelings (positive or negative) about a food.

Here are these three writing elements all in the one sheet for ease of use:

• Writology Issue 4

Happy writing!