Insight on Writing Style

Read time: 2.8 minutes

Welcome to Insight, my weekly newsletter where I dive into innovative writing uses to help you improve your mindset, health, wealth, and skills.

The Story:

I have a problem — at least according to friends and family— I monologue.

I quoted movie scenes, speaking all the lines. It was fun. The lines flowed naturally, and the words were scrumptious. Try it for yourself. Take your favorite movie scene and say the same lines.

You’ll find the same thing I did.

The Insight:

The movie scenes were fun to say out loud because they were well written.

I’m not talking about storytelling wise —even though that’s true— but instead diction wise. How they strung the words together to create the perfect pop to their prose like Aaron Sorkin’s movies have the ping-pong dialogue which keep them engaging.

Learning rhetoric is the secret potion to infuse your writing with vitality.

The Application:

Check out the book “Elements of Eloquence” by Mark Forsyth to get started.

The book is a great intro to writing well and what makes certain writing sticky. But where this book shines are the examples. My favorite example is rapping.

Rappers use rhetorical devices all the time:

• Assonance: rhyming the middle of words:

  • First few lines of Wu-Tang’s “Triumph” – “I bomb atomically, Socrates’ philosophies, and hypotheses can’t define how I be droppin’ these, mockeries, lyrically perform armed robbery, flee with the lottery, possibly they spotted me.”

• Polyptoton: repeated the same word as different parts of speech

  • The Beatles set the tone with “Please Please Me” – the first ‘please’ is a formal request and the second ‘please’ is a synonym for “to satisfy.”

• Hyperbaton: put words in an odd order so they stand out. (Like Yoda)

  • On “The World is Yours,” Nas declared “odds against Nas are slaughter”

I did a writing & storytelling break it down of Nas in the Insight community with my actionable takeaways: Nas Teaches Brainstorming Rap Lyrics In 5 Steps.

You can check out the video below.

That’s all for today.

See you next time.

—Mohammad Khan

PS: If you’re ready for more insights, here are other ways I can help:

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3. Join the Insight Community to grow with other writers.