Curtin Writers Club – Peer to Peer Writing Workshop
© Kathleen Knight
WEEK 10: ASSONANCE, ALLITERATION, RHYTHM, RESONANCE AND RHYME
Coordinator Introduction
DESCRIPTION OF TERM/S (15 mins) Practice reading your work out loud.
• Rhythm: flow, “the pattern of recurring stress, vowel length, vocalising, etc., in
any utterance in any language”, how speech or prose can sound pleasant or not.
• Prose Rhythm: “the rhythm is all right if it isn’t clearly wrong” (Burroway,
Stuckey-French, Stuckey-French, pp. 40-42), it sounds good for its intention
(slow & flowing, short & sharp), consider: sentence length, punctuation, word
choice, the terms on this workshop plan e.g. “The river moved slowly. It seemed
sluggish.” vs “The surface lay flat on the sluggish, slow-moving river ...”
• Rule of three: groupings of three things can be rhythmic and memorable e.g.
“slip, slop, slap”, “Just do it”.
• Resonance: richness or significance, especially in evoking an association or
strong emotion (musicality, imagery, engaging the senses, timbre, character,
quality, tone, reverberation, echo, significance).
• Assonance: the repetition of vowel sounds e.g. Adam appreciates apples, soon
the moon in June.
• Alliteration: the repetition of consonant sounds e.g. constant consonants can
clash, waves lash the shoreline.
• Onomatopoeia: words that imitate their meaning e.g. pop, sizzle, buzz, whirr.
• Repetition: varies pace, “emphasize (sic) certain words and emotions” e.g. “The
music? Yes, I like the music. I like your choice of music.”
• Rhyme: “repeats stressed vowel sounds and the consonants that follow” e.g.
“Jane-restrain, groan-bone”, often used in poetry, slam performance & rapping.
WRITING EXERCISE (10 mins)
Practice any of these techniques. Possible prompts: dog, sea, train, ship, moon ...
Explanation of constructive criticism/feedback. READING of the pieces. Discuss why
the good ones worked. (20 mins)
Some Feedback Terminology for Hook, Line and Narrative
Assonance
Alliteration
Onomatopoeia
Repetition
Rule of three
Rhythm
Prose rhythm
Resonance
Rhyme
Bibliography (all available in the Curtin Library)
Boisseau, M., Bar-Nadav, H., & Wallace, R. (2012). Writing poems (8th ed.). Boston, MA:
Pearson.
Burroway, J., Stuckey-French, E., & Stuckey-French, N. (2015). Writing fiction: A guide to
narrative craft (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
Hodgins, J. (2001). A passion for narrative: A guide for writing fiction. Toronto, Canada:
McClelland & Stewart.
Smith, H. (2005). The writing experiment. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.
Walker, B. (2002). The writer’s reader: A guide to writing fiction and poetry. Broadway, NSW:
Halstead Press.
New budget combined ed. (1991). The Macquarie dictionary and thesaurus. West End, Qld:
Herron Publications.
Please visit our “Curtin Writers Club” Website and/or our Facebook page.
Exercise-Workshop-Wk-10-Assonance
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