Writing Against Yourself

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Writing Against Yourself

• Facilitated by Bob Hoeppner

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Why write against oneself?

• One must think against oneself, otherwise one is
  not free Adam Zagajewski
• Thinking against oneself is a way to avoid
  cliché.
• Some people use form, such as rhyme or repetition
  to prod themselves beyond their first thoughts.

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The turn in the sonnet

• The turn, aka volta, often takes place when
  going from the octet to the sestet, or in the
  final couplet, sometimes delayed until the final
  few words.
• According to Richard Howards formulation Prose
  proceeds and verse reverses a turn is required
  in almost any successful poem.

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7 ways to turn from cliché

• Negation
• Gradation
• Relation
• Mechanization
• Motivation
• Location
• Duration

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Negation

• Make something the opposite of what it is. If
  it's bad, make it good. If it's quiet, make it
  over the top. Often used in satire. For
  instance, describe Emily Dickinson as a
  dominatrix.
• Rhetorical examples oxymoron (cruel to be
  kind) paradox youth is wasted on the young.

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Gradation

• Make something more or less than what it is.
  Increase or decrease its scope or number. For
  instance, render the jailing of Paris Hilton as a
  sign of the Apocalypse.
• Synedoche and metonymy are rhetorical examples
  (e.g. All hands on deck for sailors, The White
  House for the president.) Also hyperbole and
  litotes/understatement.

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Relation

• Connect something to something else it's not
  usually connected to. For instance, bring two
  people from separate times or sensibilities into
  the same scene, like Jesus and Pat Robertson.
• Rhetorical examples Catachresis (blind mouth,
  thirsty ear), metaphor, simile.

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Mechanization

• Look at how something is actually done. For
  instance, people say they're flying when they're
  actually sitting in a chair suspended thousands
  of feet above the earth. It's the plane that's
  flying. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say
  they are traveling in an unstable chair.
• Rhetorical onomatopoeia.

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Motivation

• Substitute the accepted motivation for doing
  something. Write about a doctor who first wants
  to do harm. Or maybe their attitude is first,
  lose no lawsuits. Or maybe they practice
  medicine to find evidence that some humans are
  really aliens from another star system.

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Location

• Put something familiar in an unusual place. For
  instance, George Bush in a cell in Guantanamo.
  The evildoers would be the guards. The coalition
  of the willing would be other members of the
  administration plotting to break out. When they
  complained about their meals, theyd be told you
  go to prison with the food you have.

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Duration

• Make something last longer or shorter than usual.
  Or put it in a different time. Or have things
  happen in reverse of the usual sequence. For
  instance, have people who've fallen in love go to
  divorce court to get divorced from being single.

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Paraprosdokian

• is a surprise or unexpected ending of a phrase or
  series.
• He was at his best when the going was good.
  Alistair Cooke on the Duke of Windsor
• There but for the grace of God -- goes God.
  Churchill

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Play with logical causes

• A person shoots their parent
• The principal cause is the shooter
• The instrumental cause is the gun
• The material cause is the bullet
• The formal cause is the parents death
• The final cause is to inherit
• Try modifying or substituting one or more causes

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Suggested reading

• http//www.hudsonreview.com/LewisSp05.pdf The
  Wry Metaphysician by Tess Lewis champions
  adjectives.
• http//www.barefootmuse.com/archives/issue4/evans7
  .htm The Future of the Fourteen Liner by Anna
  Evans on the volta.
• http//www.uky.edu/AS/Classics/rhetoric.html is a
  glossary of rhetorical terms.