Literary Style Brainstorms
Much of fiction, especially those of a prurient interest, tend to be just rote narratives containing flat descriptions and no genuine underlying gimmick or architecture that a style analyst might appreciate. The following are ideas I came up with off the dome about how to appeal to the interest of the style analyst, seeking out literary value within a work that makes it distinct from works resembling it.
- Sonnet Leads
- Each first line of a chapter could, if taken from each chapter and assembled consecutively, could form a sonnet that functions as an overall summary of the work.
- Palindromic Intro/Outro Elements
- Various elements of a story are introduced and then later absent of further mention of scenes/settings, characters, events, or actions, in the reverse order of introduction. For example: “Bill went to the store and saw Ted. Later, Ted left the store saying goodbye to Bill.” BT,TB for Bill and Ted's mentions, as well as entering the store and then exiting the store, to make it circular. With a very large story, this could present big challenges.
- Oblivious Character Sketch
- A style where a major geologic or biome-altering event takes place, while the characters carry on with their daily concerns as if it were of no consequence, not even to idly mentioning the weather growing warmer.
- Gradual discovery of simulation
- Characters involved in mundane activities begin to notice inconsistencies with how others behave, to piece together cumulative evidence that they may have entered into a simulated environment and struggle to recall the original moments of discrepancy.
- 3-diagonal “all for all” side characters
- Imagine a polygon with five or more obtuse angles, where each vertex has a diagonal drawn to each other vertex inside. Each of the side characters can be arranged as vertexes of the overall polygon, and lines from each side character can represent decisions made at least 3, OR no more than 3, of the other characters.
- Casual numbers represent IRL GPS point spoilers
- Numbers mentioned in a story can be combined in order to represent GPS locations, and those GPS locations can form a polygon shape to identify an important detail the reader may have missed in the narrative to indicate a solution early.
- Prescriptive As/Al
- Lettering involved assonance or alliteration, whether in alphabetical order or otherwise spell out a word or theme, in order of appearance. Bad examples: Awesome aural afterthoughts befuddled Barry's burrowing chinchilla's cousin's coziness (AAABBBCCC), or Thin plinths with (th) minimal billing sittings (i) made Maude's drum thumping hammer (m) beat back baubles behind (b) loosely falling along all-balled-up (l) evergreens every evening (e)= (thimble)