Top Poetic Devices for Writing Effective Exposition

What is Exposition in Creative Writing? 

Exposition in creative writing, also known as narrative exposition, focuses on background information. This background information can be about the characters, the setting, or any other element of the story. Exposition is technically a literary device on its own. Exposition is a narrative literary device in the same way that “plot” or “setting” are. In this article, we will be talking about how literary devices from different categories support exposition.  

Exposition helps you establish the “regular world.” This is the environment that your characters inhabit, the relationships they already have (or their understanding of their relationships if this is a psychological novel), and what their day-to-day life is like. As a result, it requires sensory-rich language to give us a good understanding of who the main character is and what world they inhabit. This also helps writers avoid what’s known as “white room syndrome.” 

That said, it can often feel overwhelming to approach your writing. To know when to use what device and when not to. This is where having a list of literary devices to turn to can help. When you’re writing the exposition section of a piece of creative writing, it’s helpful to think in terms of literary devices to at least get you started. As you start to assemble chunks of writing, you’ll gain momentum. 

Imagery

Imagery is a poetic device (also known as a sound device). Imagery uses sensory language. Sensory language is language that refers to the five senses of touch, taste, sight, hearing, and smell. 

Common Mistakes People Make With Imagery

There are two main mistakes that writers make when writing imagery: 

  • Redundancy
  • Over-writing aka “purple prose” 

Redundancy

In this great blog post from Kid Lit “Imagery Writing: Images Are Not All Created Equal,” Mary Kole explains that images should enhance a reader’s understanding of the moment.” She gives two examples of images that fail this test immediately: “He glowed like the sun.” and “Her tone was sharp, like barbed wire.”

Kole explains that the sun already glows and barbed wire is already sharp, which makes the image redundant. She also gives an example of a piece of imagery that works: 

“He extended the coffee. Such a simple exchange, but in that moment, it looked like a rope that could drag me back into the real world.”

This makes the coffee more than just a coffee but a rope that’s thrown into the water to save someone who’s gone overboard. It changes the meaning of the interaction with this person and gives the gesture more weight in the character’s mind. 

Over-writing

Kole also shows an example of what it would look like to write the above blurb poorly. 

“He extended the coffee. Such a simple exchange, but in that moment, it became my lifeline, a life preserver in stormy water that made all the difference between me floating and drowning.”

As Kole explains, “…this revision hits the ground like a lead balloon. Clunk. So heavy, so obvious…Your images are not the time nor the place to preach your themes.”

Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia is another sound/poetic device. Onomatopoeia is when a word sounds like the sound it makes. When you’re writing expositions, you’re establishing the ordinary world. In psychology, this is referred to as orientation and orientation relies on the big three: identity (of the protagonist), time, and place. Orientation relies on answering the following questions: 

  1. Who am I?
  2. When am I?
  3. Where am I?

Onomatopoeia can help you make the sense of “where” a person is immediate. It helps the reader feel like they are experiencing it themselves. Reader’s Digest offers a great list of different onomatopoeias and their linguistic histories as well as providing examples of what onomatopoeias are not: 

“One potential area of confusion: Words like “wow,” “eek,” or even “ugh” are not onomatopoeia. Instead, these words, outbursts that express emotion rather than a specific sound, are interjections or exclamations. While you’re brushing up on fun words, check out these examples of hyperbole as well.”  – From Reader’s Digest

Alliteration

Alliteration is when the same initial sound or letter is repeated in words that are in close proximity to each other. Blue Rose One offers some great examples of alliteration such as “Busy bees buzzed by.” and “Sweet smell of success.” 

How alliteration helps with setting

When you’re introducing readers to a new world, you run the risk of boring or overwhelming them with too much detail. But if you don’t give them enough detail, you run the risk of experiencing “white room syndrome.” When written well, settings can help connect to your readers’ emotions and support plot and character development. A common piece of advice that writers get for writing their setting is to choose a few, key memorable details. Since alliteration is a literary device that creates a sense of rhythm and musicality, it helps make details more memorable. 

Keep in mind that alliteration does not have to be relentless. It does not have to be like “busy bees buzzed by” where every initial letter and sound are the same. It could just be in a few select words describing the environment. 

Assonance & Consonance

Assonance is a sound/poetic device in which the same vowel sounds are repeated. Consonance is a sound/poetic device where the same consonant sounds are repeated. Both of these devices help establish the mood of a story. When you’re writing the “ordinary world” in your exposition, you’re demonstrating a lot about the vibe of the story. A sweeping, multi-generational drama that takes over centuries will have different exposition than an up-close-and-personal psychological thriller that happens over the course of a month.

As Oregon State University explains it, “assonance and consonance create temporary ephemeral patterns within a given line or phrase that dissipate as quickly as they emerge.” 

Euphony & Cacophony

Euphony and cacophony are sound and poetic devices. Euphony is when there is a combination of pleasing sounds and cacophony is when there is a combination of displeasing, unsettling, or discordant sounds. How can you tell what is objectively pleasing or displeasing?

The good news is that there are specific categories of sounds and letter combinations that you can search for. The disciplines that categorize different sounds are phonetics and phonology.

Sounds to create euphony

  • Vowels
  • Liquid consonants (this is a class of sonorant consonants)
  • Nasal consonants
  • Soft fricatives and semi-vowels

Sounds to create cacophony

  • Plosive consonants (aka stops)
  • Sibilance/fricatives
  • Staccato combinations

Using Euphony & Cacophony to Create Different Moods, Vivid Settings, and Psychological States

Euphony and cacophony can help you a lot with exposition. If you want to create a pleasing mood before the storm hits, euphony can help. If you want to create a sense of unease and dread, cacophony can help. 

Anaphora

Anaphora is repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of a sentence such as the following made-up example: “Twenty years, we had food. Twenty years ago, we had love. Twenty years ago we never imagined that twenty years later we’d consider doing what we were about to do.”

My writing: Notice a few things here. “T”  and “G” are two out of the six plosive phonemes in the English language. It’s constantly repeated in the words “twenty” and “ago.” So we’re combining two different devices: anaphora and cacophony. You could also throw in consonance and alliteration for argument’s sake. 

Parallelism

This literary device is when you use a balanced grammatical structure. Consider this made up example: 

“She learned to walk at 1, read at 3, and perform surgery at 12.” 

You wind up learning a lot about the character, very quickly, and in a way that is rhythmic and memorable. 

This kind of grammatical parallelism is the most straightforward type of parallelism. Other kinds of parallelism include semantic parallelism, phonological parallelism, and rhetorical parallelism. These different types of parallelism also rely on specific poetic devices. 

  • Semantic parallelism often uses antithesis
  • Phonological parallelism uses assonance, alliteration, and rhyme
  • Rhetorical parallelism can use anaphora and epistrophe

Polysyndeton

Polysyndeton is when you intentionally use a lot of conjunctions. It helps if you’re trying to demonstrate the passage of time, convey a feeling of relentlessness or accumulation, or convey a feeling of emotional weight. 

Here are a few made-up examples to help: 

Example of showing the passage of time

“In 1900, she moved to Canada and raised a son and that son married a woman who was no good and they had a daughter who became the villain of this story.” 

Example of creating the sense of accumulation

“The kitchen counter was covered in green liquid and there were dishes piled up in the sink and a dirty diaper lying open on the chair and just when she thought it couldn’t get any worse, a rat ran across the floor.” 

Example of demonstrating emotional weight

“I feel tired and stupid and smelly and gross and exhausted and I just want to scream.” 

Asyndeton

This literary device is the opposite of Polysyndeton. It’s the intentional omission of conjunctions. For example: 

Cold. Grey. Terrifying. 

Asyndeton speeds up your exposition, makes it feel sharp and harsh, and is useful for novels where you need to write an atmosphere that is tense or on edge. 

Understanding which literary devices to use can help speed up your expository writing

Writing exposition doesn’t have to be hard, it doesn’t have to be something you dread, and it doesn’t have to be boring. If you understand the different types of poetic devices that are available to you, you can be intentional about how you write and how you approach different structural elements (such as setting and character) while you write.