Creative Writing Board Game 50 Literary devices
You need to know all of these terms to play the Creative Writing Never Bored Board Game.
1. Alliteration: the repetition of the initial sounds (usually consonants) at the beginning of
closely connected words.
2. Allusion: an implied or indirect reference to something assumed to be known, such as a
historical event or person, a well-known quotation from literature, or a famous work of art.
3. Analogy: a comparison between two things to highlight their similarities and differences.
4. Assonance: the repetition of vowel sounds in the middle or ends of closely connected words.
The letters can be different, but the sound must be the same, as in 'deep sea'.
5. Caesura: A pause or breathing-place about the middle of a metrical line of poetry, generally
indicated by punctuation a pause in the content of the line.
6. Chronological order: a sequence according to time of occurrence.
7. Cliché: timeworn, or overused expression.
8. Connotation: the baggage carried by a word; the associations that a word conjures up,
beyond what it explicitly describes.
9. Consonance: the repetition of consonant sounds in the middle or ends of words in close
proximity, such as “thick pink bulk.”
10. Couplet: a rhymed pair of lines, usually of the same length.
11. Denotation: the literal dictionary meaning(s) of a word.
12. Diction: the vocabulary of a passage or poem.
13. Elision: The omission of one or more letters or syllables from a word. This is usually
marked by an apostrophe: as in 'He's going to the mall'.
14. Enjambement: the structure and meaning of a line of poetry runs over into the next line.
Thus 'Black drizzling crags that spake by the way-side/ As if a voice were in them, the sick
sight/ And giddy prospect of the raving stream...' Run on lines is the alternative word to
enjambement: it means exactly the same.
15. End-stopping: when the meaning of a line stops at the end of a line and does not run over
to the next. Punctuation is usually present at the end of the line.
16. Figurative language: speech or writing that gives more than just a literal meaning and
employs figures of speech such as similes, metaphors and personification.
17. First person point of view: in the first person point of view, (‘me’, ‘my’, and ‘I’) the narrator
participates in the action of the story. What the narrator is recounting might not be the
objective truth.
Creative Writing Board Game 50 Literary devices
18. Flashback: an earlier event is inserted into the normal chronological order of a narrative
to fill in the ‘back story.’
19. Foot: the unit for describing meter in poetry, consisting of a certain number and
combination of stressed and unstressed syllables. An iamb is ‘di dúm’; a trochee is ‘dúm di.’
20. Foreshadowing: a hint or suggestion of events that will happen in the story later.
21. Free verse: texactly what it sounds like: free verse is free of consistent patterns of rhyme
and rhythm.
22. Genre: a category of literature, art, or music characterized by a particular style or subject
matter, such as ‘fantasy’, or ‘science fiction.’
23. Hyperbole: an intentional overstatement; a figure of speech in which exaggeration is used
for effect.
24. Imagery: vivid word pictures that invoke at least one of the five senses.
25. Irony: the opposite of what is expected occurs. Dramatic irony occurs when the audience
knows something that the characters do not, such as when Romeo believes Juliet is dead and
kills himself to join her, but the audience knows she isn’t dead. Situational irony occurs when
a particular situation would lead you to expect something but another happens instead. An
example is of an English teacher playing a Creative Writing game, yet she knows none of the
literary devices and the students have to teach her. Verbal irony is akin to sarcasm, in which the
exact opposite of what is meant is said.
26. Limited omniscient point of view: in this narrative style the reader accompanies only one
character, and views all events only from their angle.
27. Lyrical: a category of poetry that does not have a story, but instead expresses thoughts and
emotions.
28. Metaphor: a figure of speech in which something is said to be another without use of
comparative words such as ‘like’ or ‘as.’
29. Metonymy: a figure of speech in which the name of one object is replaced by another
that is closely associated with it. “Washington” is a metonym for the government, and “White
House” is a metonym for the President.
30. Mood: the poet’s or persona’s attitude in style or expression toward the subject.
31. Objective point of view: the narrator never reveals more than can be worked out from the
story’s action and dialogue. What the characters think or feel is not disclosed.
32. Omniscient point of view: a narrator who knows everything about all the characters is all
knowing, or omniscient.
Creative Writing Board Game 50 Literary devices
33. Onomatopoeia: the use of words which imitate sounds.
34. Oxymoron: two words side by side that do not seem to fit together.
35. Paradox: a statement which initially seems contradictory or ridiculous, yet can be seen as
true when viewed from a different angle.
36. Pathetic fallacy: the false belief that nature sympathizes with and reacts to the world of
humanity.
37. Personification: a type of metaphor in which distinctive human characteristics are given
to something that isn’t human, like an animal, object, or idea.
38. Refrain: a verse, or group of verses repeated at intervals throughout a song or poem.
39. Rhetorical question: a question that is asked for effect and does not require an answer.
40. Rhyme: when two or more words have the same or very similar sound, like red and head.
41. Rhythm: the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry or prose.
42 Stanza: a group of lines of verse (usually no fewer than four lines), that follow the same pattern of rhythm, and (in rhymed poetry) the same pattern of rhymes; stanzas are usually divided
from each other by a space.
43. Setting: the time, place, and circumstances in which a text or movie occurs. Setting can
include time and place; the historical, geographical, political, economic, social, or religious
background; and the atmosphere or tone of the story.
44. Simile: a figure of speech in which a direct comparison is made between two dissimilar
things, using like or as.
45. Speaker: the voice of a literary work.
46. Style: the writer’s individual creative process, as determined by choices involving diction,
figurative language, rhetorical devices, sounds, and rhythmic patterns.
47. Symbol; symbolism: an image that stands for or represents something else.
48. Theme: a central idea or topic of a literary work.
49. Tone: a writer’s manner of expression in speech or writing.
50. Understatement: under emphasis of a situation. For example, someone might say “Yeah, I
did a couple of minutes of review for the test” when they actually stayed up much of the night
revising.