Figures of Speech

The wind howled and crickets sang as Robert turned towards his friend to ask, "Hey, do you know about the guy whose whole left side was cut off?" His friend's eyes turned as round as saucers at the question while he tried desperately to clear his head of the grisly images the question conjured in his head. Gulping loudly, he shook his head. Robert smirked, enjoying his friend's reaction a bit too much, "Well, he's all right now." For a minute of two his friend gaped at him, his mouth an open cavern, until the farcicality dawned on him. "So punny," he drawled before walking away.

There is no creative writing without using figures of speech. That's a bold statement but just look at the paragraph above; what would it have read like without the similes and metaphors? Without the pun? It is imperative to learn and understand figures of speech if one needs to improve their creative writing abilities; like oars are to a boat, figures of speech are to creative writing. They steer the course of your written pieces towards popularity, amusement, entertainment and eloquence. There is method to using them but ones mastered, they will open a whole new world for budding writers. 

There are more than a 100 figures of speech in total, but most of them have been rendered redundant in modern creative writing. The good news is that we need not familiarize ourselves with hundreds of them, unless someone wishes to do peruse a degree in English Literature. Had it not been for figures of speech, the written world would have been a boring place to be in. Figures of speech give us the power to break the rules or physics, nature, and just about everything, all on paper only, to produce thought provoking, powerful, imaginative and genuinely creative worlds for the readers to enjoy. Over the course of the past few years, some figures of speech have cemented their place in creative writing over others. Metaphors, Similes, Personification, Pun, Irony, Alliteration and many more have become increasingly powerful with school students.  Students will be taught these figures of speech which will be followed by repeated use in several creative writing assignments and exercises in class.