Craft of Writing: Allusion, Tmesis, and Euphemism

It's been a while since I posted some Craft of Writing activities so I thought this rainy Sunday might be a good time to continue. You can find previous, similar Craft of Writing resources here. If you haven't seen them before, the approach involves covering a writing technique in a ten minute segment at the start of the lesson. Students are shown how to use a technique, alongside examples, and then asked to put it into practice. 

There are hundreds of literary techniques that we don't usually touch on in the English classroom. There can be a danger in visiting too many of the more obscure techniques so it's up to teacher discretion on how you want to approach these and with which students (Standard, Advanced, or even Extension). I find that Advanced students, at least, are often genuinely fascinated in hearing about some of these techniques as it can illuminate some things that they might already be doing with their own writing. I always caution students with a reminder that they don't need to memorise all of these - just pick the ones they like!

Allusion

What is it: An 'allusion' is a reference, either implicit or explicit, to something outside of the text. Allusions can be categorised in various ways by adding a qualifying adjective, such as Historical allusion, Literary allusion, Religious allusion, Folkloric allusion, and Mythological allusion, and are mentioned in passing rather than described in great detail. 

Examples: 

• (RELIGIOUS) "Only you can see (...) the glasses of teeth, Thou Shalt Not on the wall" - Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas.
• (FOLKLORIC) "Sucking him down deep into the Davy dark" - Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas.
• (LITERARY) "Along with your whoreson cigarettes, may the red plague rid them" - Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood.

Why use it:

• Writers may use it as a means to connect with their audience as the allusion usually requires the responder to understand what it is in order for them to grasp the author's meaning.
• Helps to simplify complex ideas through the drawing of a comparison.
• Can add emotional weight to a text when the reader brings their own knowledge of the allusion with them (EG. Religious or mythological allusions). 
• Can direct the reader towards exploring big ideas in other texts or areas of knowledge. 

Quick Activity: Use a mythological allusion to describe a character.

Tmesis

What is it: Meaning 'to cut', tmesis describes the process of breaking a phrase or word apart through inserting a new word into its middle. 

Examples:

• "Milk waking wood", "Captain napping Cat" - Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas.
• "Fan-bloody-tastic" - Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw.

Why use it:

• Can be used to create humour by emphasising a particular phrase or word.
• Places stress on a particular part of a text by forcing the reader to re-frame their understanding of a word or phrase - they will see the broken-up phrase first before realising what it would say without the inserted word.
• Can be used to add informality to speech, or to exaggerate.  

Quick Activity: Think of three common two-word phrases and insert another word to break them up BUT consider what this word adds or changes in this phrase and why/how it could be used.

Euphemism

What is it: Using a polite or indirect expression to replace a harsher or more unpleasant truth. It is a form of a figurative language in that the euphemistic phrase does not mean what it literally appears to mean. 

Examples:

• "Your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs" - Othello by William Shakespeare.
• "His father Esau (...) undogcollared because of his little weakness" - Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas.
• Common ones in English language: 'Passed Away" (meaning to die), "Negative patient outcome" (dying on the operating table), "Downsizing" (to fire people from their jobs), "In the family way" (pregnant). 

Why use it:

• Euphemism is highly reliant on context - some euphemism are constructed for purposes of relaying information that may be considered offensive or inappropriate in certain situations or with certain audiences.
• Allows writers to express ideas that are considered 'taboo' or embarrassing.
• Can be used humorously when broaching difficult subject matter.
• Can be used to political purposes to disguise the true meaning of something.

Quick Activity: Think of one of the many awful things to happen in any of the main texts you've looked at for the HSC and use a euphemism to describe it. 

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

• Writology Issue 11

Happy writing!

Random Rules for Writing

NaNoWriMo

Late last year I threw myself into NaNoWriMo. If you're not aware, this stands for National Novel Writing Month and is a fun (fun?) exercise that favours quantity over quality. Madness, really, but for an English teacher it's a worthwhile activity. Have you ever encouraged students to use lightning writing strategies? I see it as being akin to that. 

This was my third attempt at NaNoWriMo. The first time, in about 2009, I barely wrote 2000 words before running out of steam. I spontaneously decided to write an Australian Gold Rush era novel about a bushranger who teams up with a Chinese miner to fight monsters. Then I realised that, without a plot or any substantial time for research, I was just punching words out into the dark, so I gave up. 

The second time was in 2016 and, perhaps learning from my mistakes, I opted to just journal about my memories. I got to about 25 000 words out of the required 50 000 word count. It was easier because I could approach things episodically and in a non-linear fashion. To be honest, I can't remember why I didn't get any further... it's most likely that I probably got too busy with work or just lost interest. 

In 2020 I was prompted by a friend to undertake the challenge again. Well! I managed about 30 000 words this time and then things got too busy again. I became a Head Teacher Teaching & Learning at a new school and filled in as relieving Head Teacher TAS/CAPA for Term 4 and, well, it was a tremendous experience and I had to put aside my NaNoWriMo project. Luckily, with not much doing in the holiday break before we go back, I've managed to get back to the novel and momentum has thankfully continued. 

Writing the Novel

In my life as an aspiring writer I've attempted to seriously write a novel two other times (outside of NaNoWriMo). The first one, which I undertook in my pre-teaching life, took me about ten years. By the time I had finished writing it my life had changed so much that I was no longer interested in it. I looked at it and decided that I appreciated the experience of putting it together but that it just wasn't me anymore. 

The second one was a much more ambitious attempt and remains unfinished - it fell by the wayside after I became a permanent teacher in 2014. I can see myself going back to it at some point but I'll no doubt completely rewrite what I've got. I had already switched from first person to third person while expanding my outline and I'm still unsure where I sit with the kind of narrative voice I want to use on this one. The world has also changed a lot since 2010 (when I started writing it) so there's that to think about too. 

Finding a Different Approach

So, for NaNoWriMo 2020, how was I going to manage writing an entire novel in a short space of time without boring myself? My first step was committing to a fictional novella. I've written a lot of sentences - in blogs, articles, textbooks, short stories, poetry - and I felt like I needed shake things up in my approach. So I came up with some random rules to stop myself from falling back on certain things. These were things that I either felt like I tended to rely on too much, or things that become roadblocks when I try to write. 

This is what I came up with:

• No direct speech. The only way I was to convey dialogue is through reported speech. 
• Each chapter reflects one day only.
• There can be no references made to the past. This includes referring back to anything that happened the day before. Each chapter only focuses on that one day.
• Maintaining a mixture of past/present tense to reflect the short distance of time between events portrayed and the subsequent writing of each journal entry. 
• Minimal reference to how the narrator is feeling about anything.
• Why have a compound sentence when two simple ones will do?
• Keep punctuation simplistic too. This means no hyphens, no ellipses, no brackets, and definitely no semi-colons!
  
• Each entry should make both direct and indirect references to the writing process employed by the narrator (rather than turning into a straightforward fictional narrative). 
• All of these rules are sacrosanct and must be stuck to for the entirety of the novel. They will never be broken. Except for the times when they are. 
  

I found that these rules became much more of a blessing than a restriction. I actually finished my first draft and I don't hate it :)