This article concerns a crucial element of the fiction writer’s craft: rhetoric. This is a simple concept to explain. Learning how to ‘do it’ – to write rhetorically – is another matter entirely.
It ought to be on your mind whenever you are at your desk, fingers aching as they hammer away at the keyboard, perspiration dripping from your brow, a pain jabbing above your eyes as you slave tirelessly away, a cruel sense of agony and despair churning your stomach as you begin to realise that the words filling the screen are gibberish.