Nathan Bransford - The Forums

For me, the point of reading a novel is to read a good story. I need substance, both in character depth and in an interesting plot. I enjoy attention to style and clever turns of phrase. Manufactured alliteration throughout a novel would, I believe, quickly put me off.

This is one of those "writerly ticks" I have. My ear, for some reason, is attracted to this sort of thing. When I edit I have to go back and specifically look for all the alliteration. I've had to change character names more than once because it just got to be so silly: Captain K----, Doctor D----- . I still let a few slip by because they're so pretty, but Yikes!

I must endeavor to delete those dilapidated, detestable, degenerate downers in my prose.




*edited cuz I can't spell

I'm kinda partial to sonorous susurrant sibilant soft seabreeze, sand, and surf shush sounds. Invisible language arts are like the wind.

polymath wrote:I'm kinda partial to sonorous susurrant sibilant soft seabreeze, sand, and surf shush sounds. Invisible language arts are like the wind.

Agreed, polymath, too much alliteration leads to the literary breaking of wind, and indeed the invisible -- silent -- incidences can be most deadly.

Quill wrote:

polymath wrote:I'm kinda partial to sonorous susurrant sibilant soft seabreeze, sand, and surf shush sounds. Invisible language arts are like the wind.

Agreed, polymath, too much alliteration leads to the literary breaking of wind, and indeed the invisible -- silent -- incidences can be most deadly.

Just goes to show how a comment can be taken in more than one context. I once wrote a scene where a character goes into a rest room to toot a line. Oh did that ever hang fire. No one misunderstood the drug culture slang, but workshop readers took the humorous context over the intended one. Coincidentally, the line did evoke an accurate olfactory sensation for the readers, if an unintentional objectionable disruptive one.

Quill wrote:Agreed, polymath, too much alliteration leads to the literary breaking of wind, and indeed the invisible -- silent -- incidences can be most deadly.

Well, read in that context, it certainly changes the meaning of what I wrote earlier. :)

Down the well wrote:I still let a few slip by because they're so pretty, but Yikes!

Asphyxiating Alliteration.

Apologies to E McD. We seem to have taken your post down a flagrantly fallacious and flippant thoroughfare of...farce. Please favor us with your forgiveness.

Asphyxiating alliteration does cause reprobrious raspberry reader reactions. Phbbt.

So you all agree with me then. LOL

E McD wrote:So you all agree with me then. LOL

To a point. Pointless alliteration, yes. Purposeful and judiscious alliteration for prose writers does more than show an author's erudition. It makes a commentary and/or evokes sensory experiences in readers. A visual description might evoke an aural sensation, perhaps tactile, maybe olfactory. A hyperbolus string of alliteration might make ironic commentary, as have several of the examples given. Something to keep in mind is who's expressing the commentary, author, narrator, or reported viewpoint character, and in who's voice.

Assuming Teanna converses with an acquaintance about rejecting a suitor; "Hold on a sec', Jasmine. Rough and ruddy Ready Randy's coming over." Rrr. Wraow? Woof? Grr? Context should show which.

Ooooh boy. All the alliteration in these posts is making me a little nauseated.... Room spinning...

I stopped reading a particular author because of her inability to rein in her florid prose. The last straw was the passage about 'the jade shade of the glade'.

Never picked up another of her books.

I do alliteration. I like to think I keep it in restraint, though. You know, Poe is my biggest inspiration as a writer. I read him so much as a kid and I can see his influence on me now. But I never even realized that my alliteration might come from him.

Looking for an example to share....

I've been writing the same character for over a year now (he's the dude in my avatar), and I've noticed that when I write about him s sounds really come out. It's like Valley is brought to you by the letter S and the number 3. ;)

Umm, okay - I used to get all upset when I'd read people hating on alliteration because I know I do it and I would get all insecure and wonder if my writing was bad, but I just read all four chapters of 10 and nothing really sticks out as being comparable to the examples in this thread.

I think this is another case of misinterpretation because I don't have the same frame of reference. I hear alliteration is bad and I interpret it to mean that any sentence in which similar sounds appear is bad, because I studiously avoid bad writing and haven't seen anything like the examples in this thread in a book I've read before.

MedleyMisty wrote:I think this is another case of misinterpretation because I don't have the same frame of reference. I hear alliteration is bad and I interpret it to mean that any sentence in which similar sounds appear is bad, because I studiously avoid bad writing and haven't seen anything like the examples in this thread in a book I've read before.

I sincerely hope you haven't seen any examples like the ones in this thread in published books. LOL. As Quill so eloquently pointed out, we kind of stunk up the place.

As I said earlier, I do like some alliteration. It's a style choice. Sometimes it works with the flow of the sentence, sometimes it's overkill. It's all so dependent on the writer and what they are trying to achieve. Some people do it and it doesn't stand out at all. It just adds to the rhythm of the writing. >>>> "rhythm of the writing." <<<< See, I can't help myself.