Contemporary movies often succeed on the basis of their special effects. Similarly, special effects like repetition, antithesis, and inverted word order can animate your prose and help make it memorable.

Using repetition for emphasis

Carefully used, repetition of sounds, words, phrases, or other grammatical constructions serves as a powerful stylistic device. Orators have long known its power. Here is a famous use of repetition from one of British prime minister Winston Churchill’s addresses to the British people during World War II:

We shall not flag or fail, we shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on the beaches, . . . we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, . . . we shall never surrender.

—WINSTON CHURCHILL

In this passage, Churchill uses the constant hammering of we shall accompanied by the repetition of f sounds (flag, fail, fight, France, confidence, defend, fields) to strengthen his listeners’ resolve.

Though you may not be a prime minister, you can use repetition to equally good effect. Here is another example:

So my dream date turned into a nightmare. Where was the quiet, considerate, caring guy I thought I had met? In his place appeared this jerk. He postured, he preened, he bragged, he bellowed. He practically brayed—just like the donkey he so much reminded me of.

Be careful, however, to use repetition only for a deliberate purpose.

Using antithesis to emphasize contrast

Antithesis is the use of parallel structures to highlight contrast or opposition (see Chapter 45). Like other uses of parallelism, antithesis provides a pleasing rhythm that calls readers’ attention to the contrast, often in a startling or amusing way.

Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing.

The congregation didn’t think much of the new preacher, and what the new preacher thought of the congregation she didn’t wish to say.

It is a sin to believe evil of others—but it is not a mistake.

—H. L. MENCKEN

Using inverted word order

Writers may invert the usual word order, such as putting the verb before the subject or the object before the subject and verb, to create surprise or to emphasize a particular word or phrase.

The inverted word order creates a more dramatic sentence by putting the emphasis at the end, on two dead birds.

As with any unusual sentence pattern, use inverted word order sparingly, only to create occasional special effects.

Into this grey lake plopped the thought, I know this man, don’t I?

—DORIS LESSING

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

—J. R. R. TOLKIEN