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!

Craft of Writing: Modality, Pathetic Fallacy, and Iambic Pentameter

Hello! Here are another three 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, 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. 

Modality

What is it: A choice of words indicating how definite the writer/speaker is about something. High modality language is certain and definite, whereas low modality makes the author sound unsure about their subject.

Examples:

• "'We need Duncan to make the call.' I guess that's what he says. There's much noise" - Lullaby, Chuck Palahniuk
• "Historians have always written their work in narrative form" - The Killing of History, Keith Windschuttle

Why use it:

• High modality language is used to persuade the audience to agree with a point of view, or for purposes of characterisation.
• Low modality language can lull the reader into a false sense of security, or to create a kind of character.

Quick Activity:

1. Use high or low modality to write 2-3 sentences describing a fictional politician.
2. Swap with the person next to you. Rewrite their sequence in the opposite modality.
   

Pathetic Fallacy

What is it: A kind of figurative device that highlights the relationship between a character or author's emotional state with the world around them. Most commonly represented through the weather acting as a symbol for a character's feelings. The term 'pathetic' is used here because it relates to pathos (using emotions to persuade).

Examples:

• "Some say the Earth was feverous and did shake" - an Old Man in William Shakespeare's Macbeth describes the strange weather that occurred during King Duncan's death.
• "The white cold virgin snow upon my heart / abates the ardour of my liver" - Ferdinand in The Tempest, William Shakespeare.

Why use it:

• In Shakespeare terms, nature and the weather were seen as reflections of God's feelings or a way for God to communicate with the world. As the King was seen as God's representative on Earth, this meant that the weather was closely tied to the King's wellbeing. 
• By externalising emotions in this way (or using these kinds of comparisons), writers are able to deepen the reader's understanding of abstract feelings.
• Offers a unique perspective on familiar feelings. 

Quick Activity: In regards to Shakespeare's The Tempest, use pathetic fallacy to describe the emotional state of Caliban, Miranda or Prospero.

Iambic Pentameter

What is it: A form of writing presented as 'blank verse' (unrhymed poetry). Each line is made up of five (the pentameter) double-syllable units (the iambs). More technically, the iambs are made up of one short syllable followed by a longer 'stressed' syllable. The stresses direct how each line is spoken by the performer.

Examples:

• "Dull thin, I say so: he, that Caliban / Whom now I keep in service. Thou best know'st" - Prospero in The Tempest, William Shakespeare
• "Faith, sir, you need not fear. When we were boys, / Who would believe that there were mountaineers" - Gonzalo in The Tempest, William Shakespeare
• "These tags I'll pop, and boast in rhyming verse / That what I wear puts swagger in my gait; / Though twenty shillings have I in my purse, / My self-esteem and manhood both inflate" - Shakespearean version of Thrift Shop by Macklemore, found on that most magical of places: the Internet.

Why use it:

• The Elizabethans used this precise and consciously rhythmic form of writing in their poetry to represent the grand and highly educated nature of the nobility.
• Allows the writer to shape the pace and intonation of the actor or performer reading their verse.
• Believed to give dialogue a natural and poetic sense of rhythm due to the way the iambs mirror the beat of the human heart.  

Quick Activity: Go back to a previous paragraph you have written for one of these activities and convert it into four lines of iambic pentameter.  

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

• Writology Issue 3

Happy writing!

(Picture sourced from East Riding Theatre Twitter feed. Not sure who drew it!)