# Rhetorical Figures Toolbelt

125 rhetorical figures for fiction writing. The first 39 are from Mark Forsyth's *The Elements of Eloquence*. The remaining 86 come from classical rhetoric (Aristotle, Quintilian, Cicero), literary criticism, and modern craft resources.

**Core thesis:** Memorable lines are ENGINEERED, not accidental. These are learnable, deployable techniques.

## Strategic Deployment Rules

1. **Save the fireworks.** Don't deploy every figure constantly — use them at high-impact moments (key dialogue, revelations, emotional peaks)
2. **Layer figures.** The most powerful lines combine 2-3 figures simultaneously
3. **Match figure to moment.** Sound figures for lyrical passages, structure figures for arguments, meaning figures for revelations
4. **Dialogue vs. prose.** Dialogue favors punchy figures (antithesis, chiasmus, syllepsis). Prose favors flowing figures (assonance, tricolon, periodic sentences)

---

## Part I: Forsyth's 39 Figures (from *The Elements of Eloquence*)

### Sound Figures (Euphony and Rhythm)

**1. Alliteration** — Words starting with the same sound.
- "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers"
- Power: Creates rhythm, aids memory, establishes mood
- Best for: Opening lines, character introductions, incantations

**2. Assonance** — Repeated vowel sounds within words.
- "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain"
- Power: Creates internal music without obvious repetition
- Best for: Lyrical prose, emotional passages, poetry within prose

**3. Consonance** — Repeated consonant sounds (not at start of words).
- "Pitter patter" / "All's well that ends well"
- Power: Subtle sonic texture
- Best for: Background rhythm, subtle emphasis

**4. Sibilance** — Repeated 's' sounds specifically.
- "The soft sea's sibilant susurrus"
- Power: Creates whispering, sinister, or sensual mood
- Best for: Atmosphere, danger, seduction scenes

### Repetition Figures (Pattern and Emphasis)

**5. Anaphora** — Starting successive clauses with the same word/phrase.
- "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields"
- Power: Builds momentum, creates rhetorical force
- Best for: Speeches, climactic moments, declarations of intent

**6. Epistrophe** — Ending successive clauses with the same word/phrase.
- "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child"
- Power: Creates echo effect, drives home a point
- Best for: Emotional declarations, thematic emphasis

**7. Symploce** — Combining anaphora and epistrophe (same beginning AND ending).
- "When there is talk of hatred, let us stand up and talk against it. When there is talk of violence, let us stand up and talk against it."
- Power: Maximum rhetorical intensity
- Best for: Climactic speeches, manifestos

**8. Anadiplosis** — Ending one clause with a word that begins the next.
- "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."
- Power: Creates chain of causation, logical progression
- Best for: Explaining cause-and-effect, philosophical dialogue

**9. Polyptoton** — Using the same word in different grammatical forms.
- "Please Please Me" / "Judge not, that ye be not judged"
- Power: Creates playful or profound connections between forms
- Best for: Witty dialogue, thematic emphasis

**10. Epizeuxis** — Immediate repetition of a word for emphasis.
- "Never, never, never give up" / "O Romeo, Romeo!"
- Power: Raw emotional intensity
- Best for: Extreme emotion, desperation, passion

### Structure Figures (Arrangement and Balance)

**11. Antithesis** — Juxtaposing contrasting ideas in balanced structure.
- "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"
- Power: Creates memorable contrasts, reveals truth through opposition
- Best for: Character philosophy, thematic statements, opening lines

**12. Chiasmus** — Reversing the order of elements in parallel phrases (ABBA pattern).
- "Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country"
- Power: Creates elegant intellectual surprise
- Best for: Wise characters, philosophical moments, memorable dialogue

**13. Isocolon** — Two or more clauses of identical structure and length.
- "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee"
- Power: Creates rhythm, balance, inevitability
- Best for: Character mottos, battle cries, declarations

**14. Tricolon** — Three parallel elements (the most satisfying number for the brain).
- "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"
- Power: Completeness, authority, memorability
- Best for: Rules of magic, character philosophy, world-building declarations

**15. Periodic Sentence** — Withholding the main point until the end.
- "Despite the rain, despite the cold, despite every reason to stay inside, she walked out the door."
- Power: Builds suspense at sentence level
- Best for: Building tension, reveals, dramatic moments

**16. Loose Sentence** — Main point first, then elaboration.
- "She walked out the door, despite the rain, despite the cold, despite every reason to stay inside."
- Power: Immediacy, then explanation
- Best for: Action sequences, establishing clarity first

### Meaning Figures (Semantic Play)

**17. Merism** — Naming all parts instead of the whole.
- "Ladies and gentlemen" instead of "people"
- Power: Creates grandeur, specificity, ceremonial weight
- Best for: Formal speech, world-building, ceremonial dialogue

**18. Blazon** — Extended list of parts (longer than merism).
- "Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow..." (Shakespeare)
- Power: Overwhelming detail, worship, obsession
- Best for: Character descriptions at key moments, world-building set pieces

**19. Syllepsis** — One word used in two incongruous senses simultaneously.
- "She lowered her standards and her neckline" (Dorothy Parker)
- Power: Wit, surprise, compression of meaning
- Best for: Clever dialogue, ironic narration, comic characters

**20. Transferred Epithet (Hypallage)** — Applying an adjective to the wrong noun.
- "Sleepless night" (the night isn't sleepless, the person is)
- Power: Creates atmospheric fusion between character state and environment
- Best for: Mood setting, internal-external mirroring, poetic prose

**21. Personification (Prosopopoeia)** — Giving human qualities to non-human things.
- "The wind whispered through the trees" / "Death, be not proud"
- Power: Makes the abstract tangible, the inhuman relatable
- Best for: Atmosphere, world-as-character, thematic emphasis

**22. Synecdoche** — Part stands for whole, or whole for part.
- "All hands on deck" (hands = sailors)
- Power: Creates intimacy, shows what the speaker notices
- Best for: Character voice (what they notice reveals who they are)

**23. Metonymy** — Substituting a related concept for the thing itself.
- "The Crown" for monarchy / "The pen is mightier than the sword"
- Power: Creates layers of association, cultural shorthand
- Best for: Political dialogue, world-building, status-aware characters

**24. Hyperbole** — Deliberate exaggeration for emphasis.
- "I've told you a million times"
- Power: Emotional truth over literal truth
- Best for: Passionate characters, humor, establishing voice

**25. Litotes** — Understatement through double negative or negation.
- "Not bad" (meaning quite good) / "He's no fool"
- Power: Dry wit, restraint, British humor
- Best for: Understated characters, ironic narration, contrast with hyperbolic moments

**26. Paradox** — A statement that contradicts itself but contains truth.
- "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it" (Wilde)
- Power: Forces the reader to think deeper, reveals hidden truth
- Best for: Wise characters, thematic crystallization, memorable wisdom

**27. Oxymoron** — Combining two contradictory terms.
- "Deafening silence" / "Living dead" / "Cruel kindness"
- Power: Captures contradictions in human experience
- Best for: Describing complex emotional states, paradoxical situations

### Syntactic Figures (Grammar as Tool)

**28. Enallage** — Deliberate grammatical "error" for effect.
- "Do not go gentle into that good night" (Dylan Thomas)
- Power: Creates memorable wrongness that sticks
- Best for: Poetry within prose, distinctive character voice, incantations

**29. Hendiadys** — Expressing one idea with two nouns joined by "and."
- "Sound and fury" instead of "furious sound"
- Power: Makes the abstract concrete, gives weight to both elements
- Best for: Emotional descriptions, character speech patterns

**30. Hyperbaton** — Unusual word order for emphasis.
- "Powerful you have become, the dark side I sense in you" (Yoda)
- Power: Forces attention to specific words, creates alien/archaic voice
- Best for: Non-human characters, formal/ancient speech, emphasis

### Persuasion Figures (Argument and Emotion)

**31. Rhetorical Question** — Question asked for effect, not answer.
- "Who among us has not...?" / "What's in a name?"
- Power: Engages reader's mind, creates implicit agreement
- Best for: Character speeches, internal monologue, philosophical dialogue

**32. Apophasis (Praeteritio)** — Mentioning something by saying you won't mention it.
- "I won't even bring up the fact that you lied to me three times"
- Power: Delivers the blow while appearing restrained
- Best for: Political characters, passive-aggressive dialogue, subtle manipulation

**33. Prolepsis** — Anticipating and answering an objection before it's raised.
- "You might think this is impossible, but..."
- Power: Controls the argument, shows intelligence
- Best for: Strategic characters, persuasive dialogue, narration

**34. Diacope** — Repetition of a word with intervening words.
- "Bond. James Bond." / "To be, or not to be"
- Power: Creates emphasis with space for the word to breathe
- Best for: Character introductions, key thematic statements

### Advanced/Combination Figures

**35. Synesthesia** — Mixing sensory modalities.
- "Loud colors" / "Bitter cold" / "Sweet music"
- Power: Creates rich, unusual sensory experience
- Best for: Heightened perception, altered states, magical moments

**36. Zeugma** — One word governs two others in different senses.
- "He took his hat and his leave"
- Power: Compressed wit, elegant efficiency
- Best for: Witty narration, clever dialogue

**37. Anacoluthon** — Starting a sentence one way and finishing another.
- "If you think — but no, you wouldn't understand."
- Power: Mimics real speech, shows emotional disruption
- Best for: Dialogue realism, interrupted characters, emotional moments

**38. Tmesis** — Splitting a word by inserting another word.
- "Abso-bloody-lutely" / "Un-freaking-believable"
- Power: Intense emphasis, character voice
- Best for: Strong emotional reactions, casual/vulgar characters

**39. Catachresis** — Deliberately absurd metaphor.
- "I'll speak daggers to her" (Shakespeare)
- Power: Creates vivid impossibility that communicates truth
- Best for: Extreme emotion, creative characters, visionary moments

---

## Part II: Extended Catalogue (Classical and Modern Rhetoric)

### Narrative Figures (Storytelling-Specific)

**40. In Medias Res** — Beginning in the middle of the action.
- The *Iliad* opens in the tenth year of the war, not the beginning
- Power: Immediate engagement, bypasses exposition
- Best for: Opening chapters, action sequences, cold opens

**41. Analepsis (Flashback)** — Narrating events that occurred before the current timeline.
- "Years later, he would remember..." then describing the past event
- Power: Reveals origin wounds, deepens mystery, creates dramatic irony
- Best for: Origin wound scenes, revealing sacred flaw sources

**42. Prolepsis (Flash-forward / Narrative)** — Narrating future events before they occur.
- "He did not yet know that this would be the last time he saw her alive."
- Power: Creates dread, dramatic irony, reader engagement
- Best for: Foreshadowing, building tension, tragic irony

**43. Epanalepsis** — Beginning and ending a sentence/clause with the same word.
- "The king is dead, long live the king"
- Power: Creates circular closure, suggests inevitability
- Best for: Thematic statements, chapter endings, rituals

**44. Amplificatio** — Systematically expanding on a point for rhetorical effect.
- Building a description from general to specific to overwhelming
- Power: Creates emotional crescendo through accumulated detail
- Best for: Building to revelations, emotional peaks, world-building set pieces

**45. Diminutio (Meiosis)** — Deliberate understatement to make something seem less significant.
- "'Tis but a scratch" (Monty Python) / "I have been somewhat dead" (Dickens)
- Power: Comic effect, character stoicism, ironic contrast
- Best for: Stoic characters, dark humor, contrast with actual severity

### Figures of Omission and Interruption

**46. Ellipsis** — Deliberate omission of words the reader can infer.
- "Some people like cats; others, dogs." (omitting "like")
- Power: Creates speed, implies shared understanding, mimics thought
- Best for: Fast-paced narration, terse dialogue, implied menace

**47. Asyndeton** — Omitting conjunctions between words/clauses.
- "I came, I saw, I conquered" / "Dogs, cats, birds, all of them gone."
- Power: Creates urgency, speed, breathlessness
- Best for: Action sequences, lists of chaos, rapid emotion

**48. Polysyndeton** — Using extra conjunctions between words/clauses.
- "And the rain fell and the wind blew and the world grew dark and cold and empty."
- Power: Creates relentless accumulation, biblical cadence, exhaustion
- Best for: Epic narration, McCarthy-style prose, overwhelming moments

**49. Aposiopesis** — Deliberately breaking off mid-sentence.
- "If you do that one more time, I swear I'll—"
- Power: Implies what's too terrible/emotional to say, creates tension
- Best for: Threats, emotional overwhelm, interrupted dialogue

**50. Paralepsis** — Drawing attention to something by professing to pass over it.
- "I need not remind you of what happened last time"
- Power: Emphasizes by seeming to de-emphasize
- Best for: Manipulative characters, courtroom scenes, political speech

### Figures of Sound (Beyond Forsyth)

**51. Onomatopoeia** — Words that phonetically imitate sounds.
- "Buzz," "crack," "sizzle," "murmur"
- Power: Direct sensory engagement, immersion
- Best for: Action scenes, natural descriptions, visceral moments

**52. Cacophony** — Harsh, discordant sounds for jarring effect.
- "With a crack and a crunch, the bone broke through the skin"
- Power: Creates discomfort, violence, ugliness
- Best for: Violence, horror, unpleasant situations

**53. Euphony** — Smooth, pleasant sounds for beauty.
- "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" (Keats)
- Power: Creates beauty, calm, lyricism
- Best for: Peaceful scenes, beauty, romance, landscape

**54. Cadence** — Rhythmic rise and fall of prose.
- Alternating long and short sentences to create a musical quality
- Power: Controls pace, creates emotional rhythm
- Best for: Prose style overall, chapter endings, emotional passages

### Figures of Comparison

**55. Simile** — Explicit comparison using "like" or "as."
- "Her eyes were like two moons trapped in amber"
- Power: Creates vivid imagery through familiar reference
- Best for: Character description, world-building, emotional states

**56. Metaphor** — Implicit comparison without "like" or "as."
- "Life is a stage" / "All the world's a stage" (Shakespeare)
- Power: Transforms understanding, creates new connections
- Best for: Thematic statements, philosophical dialogue, deep POV

**57. Extended Metaphor (Conceit)** — Sustaining a metaphor across multiple lines or paragraphs.
- Donne's comparison of lovers to a compass sustained over 12 lines
- Power: Creates intellectual depth, rewards close reading
- Best for: Love scenes, philosophical monologues, literary prose

**58. Analogy** — Extended comparison between two different domains for explanation.
- "A cell is like a factory: the nucleus is management, ribosomes are workers..."
- Power: Makes unfamiliar concepts accessible
- Best for: World-building exposition, mentor dialogue, explaining magic systems

**59. Allegory** — Extended metaphor where the entire narrative represents something else.
- *Animal Farm* = Soviet totalitarianism
- Power: Delivers political/philosophical critique through story
- Best for: Thematic layer, political fantasy, satirical fiction

### Figures of Irony and Reversal

**60. Verbal Irony** — Saying the opposite of what is meant.
- "What lovely weather," said during a hurricane
- Power: Character intelligence, humor, subtle communication
- Best for: Witty characters, British dialogue, social commentary

**61. Dramatic Irony** — Reader knows something the character doesn't.
- We know Juliet is alive; Romeo does not
- Power: Creates tension, dread, or comedy through knowledge asymmetry
- Best for: Mystery layer management, tragedy, suspense

**62. Situational Irony** — Outcome is opposite of what was expected.
- A fire station burning down
- Power: Reveals hidden truths, creates thematic resonance
- Best for: Plot twists, thematic crystallization, tragic outcomes

**63. Antiphrasis** — Using a word to mean its opposite, often as nickname.
- Calling a giant "Tiny" / "Little John" (who is huge)
- Power: Humor, affection, character dynamic
- Best for: Character nicknames, group dynamics, world-building

### Figures of Emotion and Address

**64. Apostrophe** — Addressing an absent person, abstract concept, or inanimate object.
- "O Death, where is thy sting?" / "Stars, hide your fires"
- Power: Elevates emotion, creates grandeur, breaks realism for effect
- Best for: Soliloquies, prayer, grief, defiance

**65. Exclamatio** — Exclamatory statement expressing strong emotion.
- "What a piece of work is man!" (Shakespeare)
- Power: Direct emotional punch, breaks narrative distance
- Best for: Character revelations, overwhelm, wonder

**66. Optatio** — Expression of a wish or desire.
- "Would that I had died instead of him"
- Power: Reveals character values, creates pathos
- Best for: Grief scenes, longing, desperate moments

**67. Imprecatio** — Calling down a curse or invoking punishment.
- "May your house fall upon your head"
- Power: Creates menace, establishes stakes, reveals fury
- Best for: Villains, betrayal scenes, magical oaths

**68. Erotesis** — Asking a question that implies a strong affirmation or denial.
- "Can anyone doubt that this is wrong?"
- Power: More aggressive than rhetorical question, demands agreement
- Best for: Courtroom speeches, confrontations, moral arguments

### Figures of Arrangement

**69. Climax (Gradatio)** — Arranging words/ideas in order of increasing importance.
- "I think. I believe. I know."
- Power: Creates momentum toward revelation or emphasis
- Best for: Building to pivotal statements, crescendo scenes

**70. Anticlimax (Bathos)** — Arranging from important to trivially unimportant.
- "He lost his wife, his fortune, and his umbrella"
- Power: Comic deflation, satirical effect
- Best for: Comedy, undermining pompous characters, Pratchett-style prose

**71. Antimetabole** — Repeating words in reverse grammatical order.
- "When the going gets tough, the tough get going"
- Power: Creates memorable wisdom, bumper-sticker memorability
- Best for: Character catchphrases, thematic statements

**72. Parenthesis** — Inserting a complete sentence/phrase within another as an aside.
- "The teacher (who had been in a foul mood all morning) slammed the book down"
- Power: Creates narrative voice, adds layers, mimics thought
- Best for: First-person narration, Adams-style comedy, adding ironic commentary

**73. Epiphonema** — A striking summary statement at the end of a passage.
- After describing a battle in detail: "And so fell the last of the great kings."
- Power: Crystallizes meaning, creates chapter-ending resonance
- Best for: Chapter endings, act conclusions, thematic punctuation

**74. Sententia** — A pithy, memorable maxim embedded in narrative.
- "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" (Tolstoy)
- Power: Universal truth compressed into one line
- Best for: Opening lines, character wisdom, thematic statements

### Figures of Description

**75. Ekphrasis** — Vivid, detailed description of a work of art or visual scene.
- Homer's description of Achilles' shield in the *Iliad*
- Power: Creates immersive visual detail, slows time
- Best for: World-building set pieces, treasure/artifact descriptions, pause moments

**76. Enargeia (Evidentia)** — Description so vivid it feels present before the reader's eyes.
- Writing a scene so the reader can see, hear, smell, and feel it
- Power: Maximum immersion, the "movie in the mind" effect
- Best for: Key scenes that must land with full sensory impact

**77. Topographia** — Detailed description of a place.
- Tolkien's descriptions of the Shire, Rivendell, Mordor
- Power: Establishes setting as character, grounds the reader
- Best for: New location introductions, world-building, atmosphere

**78. Prosopographia** — Detailed description of a person's physical appearance.
- Dickens' character introductions that make each figure instantly recognizable
- Power: Makes characters visually distinct and memorable
- Best for: Character introductions, contrasting characters

**79. Ethopoeia** — Describing a person's character traits through their habits and choices.
- Showing a character's values through what they do when no one watches
- Power: Reveals character through behavior, not exposition
- Best for: Character establishment, Storr's "behavioral residue"

### Figures of Logic and Argument

**80. Enthymeme** — A syllogism with an unstated premise the audience fills in.
- "He's a politician, so of course he's lying" (unstated: all politicians lie)
- Power: Creates implicit conspiracy between writer and reader
- Best for: Character worldview, cultural assumptions, unreliable narration

**81. Exemplum** — Using a specific story or anecdote to illustrate a general point.
- A mentor telling a parable to teach the protagonist
- Power: Makes abstract lessons concrete and memorable
- Best for: Mentor dialogue, world-building through oral history, thematic delivery

**82. Reductio ad Absurdum** — Taking an argument to its extreme to show its flaw.
- "If we let one student skip homework, we'd have to let all of them, and then no one would learn anything"
- Power: Exposes flawed logic, creates humor or dramatic tension
- Best for: Debate scenes, philosophical confrontation, comic dialogue

### Figures of Transition

**83. Metabasis** — Brief summary of what has been said and preview of what will follow.
- "Now that we have seen how the kingdom fell, let us turn to those who survived."
- Power: Orients the reader, signals narrative shift
- Best for: Transitions between acts, POV shifts, time jumps

**84. Paraenesis** — Exhortation or warning to take (or avoid) action.
- "Heed my words: go north and you will die"
- Power: Creates urgency, establishes stakes
- Best for: Prophecy, mentor advice, warnings from wise characters

### Figures of Substitution and Naming

**85. Antonomasia** — Substituting a descriptive phrase for a proper name, or a proper name for a quality.
- "The Bard" for Shakespeare / calling a traitor "a real Judas"
- Power: Instant characterization through cultural shorthand
- Best for: Epithets, world-building titles, cultural references

**86. Periphrasis (Circumlocution)** — Using a longer descriptive phrase instead of a direct name.
- "The lamp-lighter" for the sun / "the one who must not be named"
- Power: Creates atmosphere, evasion, or ceremonial gravity
- Best for: Characters who avoid naming things, world-building taboos, comedy

**87. Metalepsis** — Reference through a chain of successive associations.
- "He opened Pandora's box" (mythological origin → present trouble)
- Power: Creates layered allusive depth and intellectual texture
- Best for: Literary prose, characters with deep knowledge, mythic resonance

**88. Euphemism** — Substituting an inoffensive expression for something harsh.
- "He passed away" for "he died" / "collateral damage" for civilian deaths
- Power: Reveals character psychology, social norms, language-reality gap
- Best for: Social scenes, political dialogue, character avoidance patterns

**89. Dysphemism** — Substituting a harsh term for a neutral one.
- "Worm food" for a dead person / "bean counter" for accountant
- Power: Characterizes blunt, cynical, or irreverent speakers
- Best for: Military characters, noir voice, establishing brutal honesty

### Figures of Wordplay and Word Formation

**90. Paronomasia (Pun)** — Playing on multiple meanings or similar-sounding words.
- "Ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man" (Mercutio, dying)
- Power: Wordplay in dialogue, thematic double-meaning
- Best for: Comic relief, characters who weaponize language, death-scene wit

**91. Antanaclasis** — Repeating a word in two different senses.
- "Your argument is sound, nothing but sound" (Franklin)
- Power: Compressed wit, turning an opponent's words against them
- Best for: Debate scenes, clever antagonists, double entendre

**92. Anthimeria** — Using one part of speech as another.
- "I'll unhair thy head" (Shakespeare) / "Let me Netflix that"
- Power: Fresh, surprising diction that energizes voice
- Best for: Creative characters, neologistic worlds, modern voice

**93. Neologism** — Coining a new word.
- "Doublethink" (Orwell) / "quark" (Joyce)
- Power: World-building, establishing unique narrative voice
- Best for: Speculative fiction, invented cultures, philosophical concepts

**94. Portmanteau** — Blending parts of two words to create a new one.
- "Slithy" = slimy + lithe (Carroll) / "brunch" = breakfast + lunch
- Power: Comic invention, linguistic world-building
- Best for: Fantasy/sci-fi terminology, comic characters, brand naming

**95. Malapropism** — Comic misuse of a word by confusing it with a similar-sounding one.
- "She is as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile" (alligator)
- Power: Instant comic characterization
- Best for: Uneducated or pretentious characters, comic relief

**96. Spoonerism** — Transposing initial sounds of two or more words.
- "You have hissed all my mystery lectures" (missed all my history lectures)
- Power: Comic dialogue, showing nervousness or fluster
- Best for: Flustered characters, comic scenes, verbal tics

### Figures of Amplification and Accumulation

**97. Accumulatio (Congeries)** — Heaping up words of similar meaning to intensify.
- "He was a bag of bones, a floppy doll, a broken stick, a maniac" (Kerouac)
- Power: Creates breathless intensity through accumulated synonyms
- Best for: Emotional overwhelm, character descriptions, manic narrators

**98. Enumeratio** — Systematically listing parts, causes, or consequences.
- "There are the lover, the lunatic, and the poet" (Shakespeare)
- Power: World-building through inventory, establishing scope
- Best for: Catalogues, magical inventories, strategic planning scenes

**99. Tapinosis** — A degrading epithet that diminishes its subject.
- Calling a palace "that shack" / referring to a war as "that scuffle"
- Power: Shows contempt through diction choice
- Best for: Characters expressing disdain, class conflict, political satire

**100. Pleonasm** — Using more words than necessary for emphasis.
- "I saw it with my own eyes" / "the burning fire"
- Power: Emphatic, archaic, or deliberately verbose voice
- Best for: Ceremonial speech, pompous characters, archaism

**101. Tautology** — Repeating the same idea in different words.
- "It is what it is" / "the future is ahead of us"
- Power: Philosophical deadpan, Beckettian absurdism
- Best for: Absurdist fiction, philosophical characters, dry humor

### Figures of Repetition (Beyond Forsyth)

**102. Conduplicatio** — Repeating a key word from a preceding clause to begin the next.
- "The land of my fathers. My fathers can have it." (Dylan Thomas)
- Power: Links ideas while building emotional weight
- Best for: Thematic development, ironic reversal

**103. Epimone** — Persistent repetition of the same plea or question.
- "Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained?"
- Power: Shows obsession, desperation, or confrontational tension
- Best for: Speeches, breakdowns, characters demanding answers

**104. Ploce** — Repeating a word with a different shade of meaning each time.
- "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds" (Shakespeare)
- Power: Explores multiple facets of a concept in compressed language
- Best for: Philosophical dialogue, thematic density

**105. Palillogia** — Repeating a word for vehemence across clauses.
- "O horror, horror, horror!" (Shakespeare, Macbeth)
- Power: Conveys shock, overwhelm, extreme emotion
- Best for: Disaster revelations, grief, trauma responses

### Figures of Syntax and Construction

**106. Parataxis** — Placing clauses side by side without subordination.
- "The door opened. A man entered. He said nothing."
- Power: Hemingway-style minimalism, flat affect, hard-boiled voice
- Best for: Action sequences, terse narrators, minimalist prose

**107. Hypotaxis** — Complex subordinate clause construction.
- "Although the rain had stopped, because the roads were flooded, since no one could drive..."
- Power: Faulknerian complexity, neurotic or intellectual thought patterns
- Best for: Stream-of-consciousness, academic characters, Gothic prose

**108. Brachylogia** — Extreme brevity of expression.
- "Sighted sub, sank same." (Navy dispatch)
- Power: Stark compression, military efficiency
- Best for: Terse characters, dispatches, telegraphic narration

**109. Apposition** — Placing a noun phrase beside another as explanation.
- "Paris, the City of Light, burned."
- Power: Efficient mid-sentence characterization without exposition
- Best for: World-building compression, character introductions

### Figures of Thought and Argumentation (Beyond Earlier)

**110. Aporia** — Expression of genuine doubt about what to say or do.
- "To be, or not to be, that is the question" (Hamlet)
- Power: Shows intellectual honesty, moral uncertainty
- Best for: Interior monologue, philosophical characters, crisis points

**111. Epigram** — Brief, witty, often paradoxical statement.
- "I can resist everything except temptation" (Wilde)
- Power: Characterizes intellectual sophistication
- Best for: Urbane characters, salon scenes, narrator asides

**112. Expeditio** — Enumerating possibilities then eliminating all but one.
- "Either he fled, or he hid, or he fought. He did not flee. He could not hide."
- Power: Creates logical inevitability, detective reasoning
- Best for: Mystery solving, strategic dialogue, elimination scenes

**113. Sermocinatio (Dialogismus)** — Putting words into another's mouth.
- "And he'll say to himself: 'What have I done?'"
- Power: Imagined conversations, prophecy, mockery
- Best for: Predictions, character analysis, embedded voices in narration

**114. Procatalepsis** — Anticipating an objection and answering it preemptively.
- "You might say this plan is too costly. But consider what inaction costs."
- Power: Controls the argument, shows tactical intelligence
- Best for: Persuasive speeches, debate scenes, narrator authority

### Figures of Description (Beyond Earlier)

**115. Chronographia** — Vivid description of a time, season, or historical moment.
- "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." (Dickens)
- Power: Establishes temporal atmosphere and historical stakes
- Best for: Opening chapters, era-setting, seasonal transitions

**116. Foreshadowing** — Planting hints of future events.
- Repeated blood imagery before a murder in *Macbeth*
- Power: Builds suspense, creates narrative cohesion, rewards rereading
- Best for: Mystery layer, planting details, structural craftsmanship

### Figures of Permission and Address (Beyond Earlier)

**117. Adynaton** — Hyperbole so extreme it describes the impossible.
- "When pigs fly" / "I'll sooner have a beard grow in my palm" (Shakespeare)
- Power: Emphatic refusal, comic exaggeration, absolute certainty
- Best for: Defiant characters, humorous oaths, impossible conditions

**118. Comprobatio** — Complimenting someone to gain approval before a request.
- "You, who have always been so wise, will surely see my point."
- Power: Strategic flattery, manipulation
- Best for: Courtiers, manipulative characters, persuasion scenes

**119. Dilemma (Rhetorical)** — Presenting alternatives that are all unfavorable.
- "If you speak, you condemn yourself. If you stay silent, your silence condemns you."
- Power: Trapping characters in impossible choices
- Best for: Interrogation scenes, moral crises, narrative tension

### Rare and Specialized Figures

**120. Kenning** — Compressed metaphorical compound replacing a simple noun.
- "Whale-road" for the sea / "bone-house" for the body / "sky-candle" for the sun
- Power: Archaic atmosphere, poetic compression
- Best for: Fantasy prose, Old English style, mythic narration

**121. Homoioteleuton** — Similar endings in adjacent or parallel words (prose rhyme).
- "With devotion, with emotion, with promotion of the notion"
- Power: Incantatory rhythm without verse structure
- Best for: Ritual scenes, prophetic speech, lyrical prose

**122. Distributio** — Dividing a whole into parts and assigning each a role.
- "To the young, excitement; to the old, dread; to the women, grief"
- Power: Panoramic view of differential impact
- Best for: Epic narration, war scenes, sweeping historical moments

**123. Epanorthosis (Correctio)** — Retracting a statement to correct or intensify it.
- "He was brave — no, reckless" / "I am the worst — no, the most unfortunate"
- Power: Shows a mind searching for precision, self-revising in real time
- Best for: First-person narration, emotional volatility, intellectual precision

**124. Solecism (Deliberate)** — Intentional grammatical deviation for characterization.
- "We was robbed!" / "Me and him went"
- Power: Authentic dialect, class markers, sociolinguistic depth
- Best for: Working-class characters, regional voice, authentic dialogue

**125. Adage / Proverb** — Traditional short saying expressing general truth.
- "Still waters run deep" / "A stitch in time saves nine"
- Power: Grounds fiction in folk wisdom
- Best for: Traditional characters, rural settings, elder dialogue

---

## Figure Deployment by Story Moment

| Story Moment | Primary Figures | Why |
|-------------|----------------|-----|
| **Opening line** | Antithesis, Periodic Sentence, Paradox, In Medias Res, Sententia, Chronographia | Hook with surprise or contrast |
| **Character introduction** | Diacope, Blazon, Transferred Epithet, Prosopographia, Ethopoeia, Antonomasia | Make them memorable immediately |
| **Key dialogue** | Chiasmus, Antithesis, Syllepsis, Enthymeme, Antanaclasis, Epigram | Make lines quotable |
| **Battle/Action** | Tricolon, Anaphora, Isocolon, Asyndeton, Onomatopoeia, Parataxis, Brachylogia | Create rhythm and momentum |
| **Emotional peak** | Epizeuxis, Anadiplosis, Hyperbole, Apostrophe, Aposiopesis, Palillogia, Epimone | Raw intensity |
| **Revelation** | Paradox, Litotes, Periodic Sentence, Dramatic Irony, Epanorthosis | Make truth land with weight |
| **World-building** | Merism, Blazon, Synesthesia, Ekphrasis, Topographia, Kenning, Neologism, Enumeratio | Create richness and specificity |
| **Humor** | Syllepsis, Zeugma, Litotes, Bathos, Antiphrasis, Malapropism, Spoonerism, Paronomasia | Witty compression |
| **Climax speech** | Anaphora + Tricolon + Antithesis + Gradatio + Accumulatio | Maximum rhetorical force |
| **Closing line** | Chiasmus, Paradox, Epiphonema, Epanalepsis, Sententia | Satisfying circularity |
| **Foreshadowing** | Prolepsis (narrative), Paraenesis, Dramatic Irony, Foreshadowing | Plant future payoffs |
| **Grief/Loss** | Apostrophe, Optatio, Epizeuxis, Polysyndeton, Adynaton | Emotional devastation |
| **Persuasion/Debate** | Expeditio, Procatalepsis, Dilemma, Reductio ad Absurdum, Comprobatio | Strategic argumentation |
| **Interior monologue** | Aporia, Epanorthosis, Hypotaxis, Ploce, Sermocinatio | Mind thinking in real time |
| **Comic characters** | Malapropism, Spoonerism, Tautology, Pleonasm, Bathos | Voice-driven humor |
| **Archaic/Fantasy** | Kenning, Periphrasis, Anastrophe, Homoioteleuton, Portmanteau | Ancient or alien voice |

## Combination Power

The most memorable lines combine multiple figures:

- **"To be, or not to be"** = Antithesis + Diacope
- **"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"** = Anaphora + Antithesis + Isocolon
- **"Ask not what your country can do for you..."** = Chiasmus + Antithesis + Anaphora
- **"We shall fight on the beaches..."** = Anaphora + Tricolon + Isocolon
- **"All happy families are alike..."** = Sententia + Antithesis + Paradox
- **"Call me Ishmael."** = Apostrophe + Ellipsis (extreme compression)

**Rule of thumb:** 2-3 figures per memorable line. More than 3 becomes overwrought.
