Patterning Otline (Sentence Architecture & Flow)
1. Introduction to Patterning
Core Concepts: Deliberate arrangement, sequencing, repetition, and structural design of words, phrases, and clauses.
Parallelism: The foundational principle of aligning similar grammatical structures across neighboring clauses or sentences.
Repetition: The strategic reuse of words, sounds, or syntactical structures to create rhythm, emphasis, or cohesion.
2. Symmetry & Structural Balance
Isocolon: Creating a series of parallel clauses strictly identical in length, rhythm, and grammatical structure ("American by birth, rebel by choice").
Scesis Onomaton: Repeating a single idea using a series of synonymic phrases or noun-adjective strings that lack a main verb ("A conqueror, a hero, a champion").
Anaphora: Repeating words at the beginning of successive clauses ("We shall fight... we shall win").
Epistrophe: Repeating words at the end of successive clauses ("...of the people, by the people, for the people").
Chiasmus: Inverting grammatical structures or concepts across parallel clauses ("Despised by the great, praised by the humble").
Antimetabole: A specific chiasmus that reverses the exact same words in identical grammatical structures ("Eat to live, not live to eat").
3. Pacing & Conjunctions
Asyndeton: Deliberately omitting conjunctions between coordinate clauses ("I came, I saw, I conquered").
Parataxis: Placing short, independent clauses side-by-side without subordinating conjunctions to create a swift, direct, drumbeat rhythm ("The sun set. The wind blew. We walked on.").
Brachylogia: Omitting conjunctions specifically between single words or phrases to force extreme brevity ("Love, honor, obey").
Articulus: Listing a rapid-fire sequence of single words separated only by commas ("First-rate, noble, brilliant, legendary").
Polysyndeton: Overloading conjunctions between clauses to build weight or exhaustion ("We ate and slept and ran and played").
Epizeuxis: Immediate, uninterrupted repetition of a word or phrase for raw intensity ("No, no, no, no!").
Staccato & Stylofragment: Using single-word sentences or incomplete sentence fragments intentionally to fracture cadence ("Darkness. Absolute silence. Waiting.").
4. Substitution
Anthimeria: Using one part of speech as another, such as noun-to-verb conversion ("I need a good cry", "Just google it").
Alleotheta: Substituting one grammatical form, tense, or gender for another ("Tomorrow you are gone").
Antanaclasis: Repeating a single word within a sentence, but changing its meaning with each repetition ("If you don't stick together, you will be stuck").
Malapropism: Structurally substituting an incorrect, similar-sounding word into a sentence for comical effect.
5. Hyperbaton
Hyperbaton / Anastrophe: Inverting standard word order ("Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood").
Anadiplosis: Repeating the last word of one clause at the start of the next ("Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate").
Spoonerism: Swapping initial letters or structural chunks between words within a phrase ("top landing" → "lap tanding").
6. Amphiboly
Zeugma: A single governing word tying together two distinct parts of a sentence.
Prozeugma, Synzeugma, Hypozeugma, Hemizeugma: Positional variations of the governing verb across clauses.
Syllepsis: A zeugma where the governing word applies to two nouns in fundamentally different senses ("She hatched a plan and three chicks").
Garden Path Sentence: A sentence structured so that the reader's initial parse turns out to be grammatically incorrect ("The old man the boats").
Paronomastic Zeugma: A zeugma built explicitly around a wordplay pun.
1. Introduction to Patterning
Core Concepts: Deliberate arrangement, sequencing, repetition, and structural design of words, phrases, and clauses.
Parallelism: The foundational principle of aligning similar grammatical structures across neighboring clauses or sentences.
Repetition: The strategic reuse of words, sounds, or syntactical structures to create rhythm, emphasis, or cohesion.
2. Symmetry & Structural Balance
Isocolon: Creating a series of parallel clauses strictly identical in length, rhythm, and grammatical structure ("American by birth, rebel by choice").
Scesis Onomaton: Repeating a single idea using a series of synonymic phrases or noun-adjective strings that lack a main verb ("A conqueror, a hero, a champion").
Anaphora: Repeating words at the beginning of successive clauses ("We shall fight... we shall win").
Epistrophe: Repeating words at the end of successive clauses ("...of the people, by the people, for the people").
Chiasmus: Inverting grammatical structures or concepts across parallel clauses ("Despised by the great, praised by the humble").
Antimetabole: A specific chiasmus that reverses the exact same words in identical grammatical structures ("Eat to live, not live to eat").
3. Pacing & Conjunctions
Asyndeton: Deliberately omitting conjunctions between coordinate clauses ("I came, I saw, I conquered").
Parataxis: Placing short, independent clauses side-by-side without subordinating conjunctions to create a swift, direct, drumbeat rhythm ("The sun set. The wind blew. We walked on.").
Brachylogia: Omitting conjunctions specifically between single words or phrases to force extreme brevity ("Love, honor, obey").
Articulus: Listing a rapid-fire sequence of single words separated only by commas ("First-rate, noble, brilliant, legendary").
Polysyndeton: Overloading conjunctions between clauses to build weight or exhaustion ("We ate and slept and ran and played").
Epizeuxis: Immediate, uninterrupted repetition of a word or phrase for raw intensity ("No, no, no, no!").
Staccato & Stylofragment: Using single-word sentences or incomplete sentence fragments intentionally to fracture cadence ("Darkness. Absolute silence. Waiting.").
4. Substitution
Anthimeria: Using one part of speech as another, such as noun-to-verb conversion ("I need a good cry", "Just google it").
Alleotheta: Substituting one grammatical form, tense, or gender for another ("Tomorrow you are gone").
Antanaclasis: Repeating a single word within a sentence, but changing its meaning with each repetition ("If you don't stick together, you will be stuck").
Malapropism: Structurally substituting an incorrect, similar-sounding word into a sentence for comical effect.
5. Hyperbaton
Hyperbaton / Anastrophe: Inverting standard word order ("Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood").
Anadiplosis: Repeating the last word of one clause at the start of the next ("Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate").
Spoonerism: Swapping initial letters or structural chunks between words within a phrase ("top landing" → "lap tanding").
6. Amphiboly
Zeugma: A single governing word tying together two distinct parts of a sentence.
Prozeugma, Synzeugma, Hypozeugma, Hemizeugma: Positional variations of the governing verb across clauses.
Syllepsis: A zeugma where the governing word applies to two nouns in fundamentally different senses ("She hatched a plan and three chicks").
Garden Path Sentence: A sentence structured so that the reader's initial parse turns out to be grammatically incorrect ("The old man the boats").
Paronomastic Zeugma: A zeugma built explicitly around a wordplay pun.
Repetition is an important part of style as repeated ideas carry more meaning since they are used more often than other words. There are two main types of repetition used in writing: sonance uses repeated sounds to make a line of text sound better and more memorable (you can check out the article on sonance here). Parallelism, on the other hand, is the process of using similar syntax over multiple sentences or similar ideas throughout a work to make the lines or ideas more noteworthy or memorable for the reader.
Parallelism in syntax
There are different ways to structure repeated words and phrases. For instance, anaphora is where the same words are repeated at the start of multiple clauses to show that they are related: He walked out the door. He walked away from his life. Anaphora and its opposite epistrophe (when the same words are repeated at the end of a clause) are the most commonly used form of parallelism and shows up in most famous speeches, like this from Winston Churchill in 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 on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.”
Another famous example of anaphora comes at the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens:
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
Notice that in the last example each parallel was an opposite: best vs. worst, wisdom vs. foolishness, belief vs. incredulity, and so on. This is call antithesis--the parallelism is used to point out stark differences. Antithesis doesn't need to be so drawn out either: "To err is human; to forgive divine." Antithesis can also be established by polysyndeton, which is the deliberate use of a series of conjunctions: "She is so rich and so beautiful and so very stupid." Polysyndation sets up an a parallel expectation "so + something good" and then subverts the expectation (rich and beautiful are followed by stupid).
Parallelism also doesn't need to be in the same order to be effective. Chiasmus is where the word order in the first clause is mixed up in the second, like in this example from Havelock Ellis: “Charm is a woman’s strength, strength is a man’s charm.” The reversal works a lot like antithesis--it creates a humorous contrast. If the words are in the exact opposite order, this chiasmus is called antimetabole, as inthe popular saying by David Foster Wallace:"Fiction's job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable."
Some forms of parallelism play with the meaning of the words they repeat. Antanaclasis, for example, is where several clauses repeat a word, but the word has a different meaning each time: "I can do this,” Ralph muttered. “I just need to get off my can.” Another clever type of parallelism is anadiplosis, where a word or phrase at the end of a clause is repeated at the start of the following clause. Here's an example from Shakespeare's Richard III:
Parallelism also doesn't need to be in the same order to be effective. Chiasmus is where the word order in the first clause is mixed up in the second, like in this example from Havelock Ellis: “Charm is a woman’s strength, strength is a man’s charm.” The reversal works a lot like antithesis--it creates a humorous contrast. If the words are in the exact opposite order, this chiasmus is called antimetabole, as inthe popular saying by David Foster Wallace:"Fiction's job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable."
Some forms of parallelism play with the meaning of the words they repeat. Antanaclasis, for example, is where several clauses repeat a word, but the word has a different meaning each time: "I can do this,” Ralph muttered. “I just need to get off my can.” Another clever type of parallelism is anadiplosis, where a word or phrase at the end of a clause is repeated at the start of the following clause. Here's an example from Shakespeare's Richard III:
I am a villain. Yet I lie. I am not.
Fool, of thyself speak well. Fool, do not flatter.
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
Parallelism in story meaning
Parallelism can extend beyond just words and sentences--texts can have entire scenes and lines of dialogue that mirror each other. These are called parallel episodes and are used to reinforce the story's theme.
Parallelism can also be seen in the form of motifs and leitmotifs. A motif is a reoccurring image or concept in a story that ties into the theme. In the aforementioned King Lear, madness is a motif that reoccurs throughout, as Lear, Edgar, and the Fool all go crazy. Motifs can also be objects in the story: in The Godfather, every time an orange appears, a character dies. In fact, visual mediums like film and graphic novels use motifs more than regular literature, especially when transitioning between scenes. Star Wars famously uses wipe cuts between scenes and its opening yellow scrawl, while Edgar Wright's films tend to end the scene on an object or person and cut to the next scene instantly with the object or person in the same position. These "little motifs" of leitmotifs are intended not bolster a story's theme but its structure by starting new scenes in the same way. Stories like "St. Lucy's Home for Girl's Raised by Wolves" by Karen Russell and Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card start every chapter with an epigraph, which show the passage of time in the story.
- One way parallel episodes do this is by putting two scenes that deal with the same topic next to each other. In Julius Caesar, Cinna the Poet is mistaken for Cinna the Senator and is killed by an angry mob; in the next scene, Marc Antony and Octavius checking over a list of conspirators and mention that they need to be careful to only punish the those who are truly guilty.
- Another type of parallel episode occurs when a character is put in the same situation twice. In Cannery Row, Mack and the boys throw a party for Doc, but everything gets broken and it's a failure; later, Mack and the boys throw a second party for Doc, but are successful this time. These kinds of parallel scenes are used to show change and character growth.
- There are also parallel plots, where the same conflicts happen to different sets of characters. For instance, King Lear's main story is the plotting against Lear by daughters Reagin and Goneral and the expulsion of Cordelia, who actually loves him; the subplot in Lear is the plotting against Gloucester by his son Edmund after the expulsion of Edgar, who actually loves him.
Parallelism can also be seen in the form of motifs and leitmotifs. A motif is a reoccurring image or concept in a story that ties into the theme. In the aforementioned King Lear, madness is a motif that reoccurs throughout, as Lear, Edgar, and the Fool all go crazy. Motifs can also be objects in the story: in The Godfather, every time an orange appears, a character dies. In fact, visual mediums like film and graphic novels use motifs more than regular literature, especially when transitioning between scenes. Star Wars famously uses wipe cuts between scenes and its opening yellow scrawl, while Edgar Wright's films tend to end the scene on an object or person and cut to the next scene instantly with the object or person in the same position. These "little motifs" of leitmotifs are intended not bolster a story's theme but its structure by starting new scenes in the same way. Stories like "St. Lucy's Home for Girl's Raised by Wolves" by Karen Russell and Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card start every chapter with an epigraph, which show the passage of time in the story.