One of the last tools I developed for my book “Writing Tools” invited writers to establish a pattern, but then, for the last item, give it a twist: Wynken, Blynken… and Nod.
This rhetorical device works well in columns because there a momentum of persuasion in it. The repetition is a drumbeat, the variation a clash of cymbals, a rimshot.
Gary Shelton writes a sports column for the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times and has won national awards for his work. He likes to play with words to make his point, as he does in this column about a coach being tough on his quarterback:
In a season that has turned into the time of the boiled blood, on the sideline that has turned into the land of the popped cork, it is time for Gruden to lower the volume. It is time to mix a little calm into the chaos. It is time for a little temperance instead of temper.
The repetition of “it is time” leads to the nice play on “temperance” and “temper.”
A bit later on:
…Gruden is a coach, a professional where the battle cry is this: When all else fails, you yell. Lombardi yelled. Shula yelled. Ditka yelled. Parcells yells. The way Simms has played, Gandhi might yell at him, too.
There’s the tool: Establish the pattern with those four short sentences, but change the pattern at the end. Give it a twist. Punch that line.
— Roy Peter Clark, vice president & senior scholar
