epigrams/epigraphs

[dios4vida]

Lest we overlook epistle, in literary terms, a soliloquy or one-sided correspondence as in a letter.

Greek root prefix epi- meaning on, at, besides, after. Epidermis. An epithet can also be a synecdoche or metonymy, exotic tropes that are more commonplace than might be expected, not necessarily an expletive. Big Tiny, an epithet that's also a metonymy, a characteristic of an entity that stands for the whole; all hands on deck, where hands as a part of the whole is a synecdoche.

Hold on, let me grab my dictionary so I can understand you, polymath. Once again your intelligence astounds me. :)

[Watcher55]

OK, I can handle two epicentric (am I making that word up?) discussions.

I use quotes from people smarter than me (that would be anyone); lyrics, snippets from literature, movies, TV, famous eggheads and artists, people on the street. I do use quotes from some of my characters but those are from episodes in books not yet fully remembered.

My thinking is that well placed allusions give the narrator and the audience a shared frame of reference so they can explore the illusions together.

Here’s one for query writers from the
Great Big Webster’s (GBW):

epit*o*me 1a: a summary of a written work
3: brief or miniature form

A query is your story writ small. The details are hidden in your style.