Writing Amalgamation

The Eckleburg Workshops

A consolidation of two or more entities into a single entity. This can be a consolidation of people, places, iconic items and even narratives. Amalgamation is a craft technique used by many writers when writing fictional elements that draw from real life experiences. 

Amalgamation Writing Exercise

Choose two of your favorite literary characters. Now, identify your worst personal characteristic, the characteristic that you pretend no one else knows about you so you don’t have to own it. Finally, amalgamate your two favorite literary characters with your worst characteristic and write a short scene with this amalgamated character.

Submit Your Work for Individualized Feedback

Please use Universal Manuscript Guidelines when submitting: .doc or .docx, double spacing, 10-12 pt font, Times New Roman, 1 inch margins, first page header with contact information, section breaks “***” or “#.”

Sources

A Handbook to Literature. William Harmon.

“Cogito et Histoire de la Folie.” Jacques Derrida.

Eats Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Lynne Truss.

The Elements of Style. William Strunk. 

New Oxford American DictionaryEdited by Angus Stevenson and Christine A. Lindberg.

The Norton Anthology of World LiteratureMartin Puchner, et al.

The Norton Introduction to PhilosophyGideon Rosen and Alex Byrne.

Woe is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English. Patricia T. O’Conner

Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. Janet Burroway, Elizabeth Stuckey-French & Ned Stuckey-French.

Writing the Other. Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward.

 

Writing Allusion

The Eckleburg Workshops

An allusion is a [figure of speech in prose or poetry that makes a] brief, often implicit and indirect, reference within a literary text to something outside the text, whether another text (e.g., the Bible, a myth, another literary work, a painting, or a piece of music) or any imaginary or historical person, place, or thing. (The Norton Anthology of World Literature)

It seeks, by tapping the knowledge and memory of the reader, to secure a resonant emotional effect from the association already in the reader’s mind. (A Handbook to Literature)

Allusion Writing Exercise

Choose a scene or section from a work you’ve already written. This can be as small as a paragraph or a full chapter. Start a new document and rewrite the scene or section, including an allusion to a single work. This can be a famous novel, essay, song, painting…. One rule, do not name the title of the work.

Submit Your Work for Individualized Feedback

Please use Universal Manuscript Guidelines when submitting: .doc or .docx, double spacing, 10-12 pt font, Times New Roman, 1 inch margins, first page header with contact information, section breaks “***” or “#.”

Sources

A Handbook to Literature. William Harmon.

“Cogito et Histoire de la Folie.” Jacques Derrida.

Eats Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Lynne Truss.

The Elements of Style. William Strunk. 

New Oxford American DictionaryEdited by Angus Stevenson and Christine A. Lindberg.

The Norton Anthology of World LiteratureMartin Puchner, et al.

The Norton Introduction to PhilosophyGideon Rosen and Alex Byrne.

Woe is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English. Patricia T. O’Conner

Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. Janet Burroway, Elizabeth Stuckey-French & Ned Stuckey-French.

Writing the Other. Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward.

Writing Anaphora

The Eckleburg Workshops

Anaphora is one of the rhetorical devices of repetition, in which the same expression (word or words) is repeated at the beginning of two or more lines, clauses or sentences. (A Handbook to Literature)

Anaphora Writing Exercise

Choose an essential moment in a previously written work. This moment should be one in which you want the reader to more slowly experience each and every second of it.

Which phrase stands out most in this section? Play with this phrase and replicate it in order to slow the moment even further. Also, consider how the replication of phrase can create a sense of closure and cyclical movement within the section.

An analogy is a comparison of two things, alike in certain aspects; particularly a method used in exposition and description by which something unfamiliar is explained by being compared to something more familiar. In argumentation and logic, it  is frequently employed to justify contentions and is widely used in poetry but also in other forms of writing; a simile is an expressed analogy, a metaphor is an implied one. (A Handbook to Literature)

Origin

late Middle English (in the sense appropriateness, correspondence): from French analogie,Latin analogia proportion, from Greek, from analogos proportionate.’ (New Oxford American)

Analogy Writing Exercise

Choose a scene or section of a previously written work in which the narrator or a character needs to explain something to the reader and is currently attempting to explain in a literal, direct way. Study the intention of the explanation and the subject of the explanation.

Next, choose your favorite parable. Think Aesop. How might you rewrite this favorite parable to fit your scene’s explanatory needs? Rewrite the scene using the parable rewrite.

Submit Your Work for Individualized Feedback

Please use Universal Manuscript Guidelines when submitting: .doc or .docx, double spacing, 10-12 pt font, Times New Roman, 1 inch margins, first page header with contact information, section breaks “***” or “#.”

Sources

A Handbook to Literature. William Harmon.

“Cogito et Histoire de la Folie.” Jacques Derrida.

Eats Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Lynne Truss.

The Elements of Style. William Strunk. 

New Oxford American DictionaryEdited by Angus Stevenson and Christine A. Lindberg.

The Norton Anthology of World LiteratureMartin Puchner, et al.

The Norton Introduction to PhilosophyGideon Rosen and Alex Byrne.

Woe is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English. Patricia T. O’Conner

Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. Janet Burroway, Elizabeth Stuckey-French & Ned Stuckey-French.

Writing the Other. Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward.