# (5) 17 Jun 2009, 09:34AM: The Cool Old Rhetorical Technique That's Sweeping The Discourse:
From yesterday's co-working session:
Toby was working on her novel. In one scene, she got stuck: she wanted to express one character's mental response to what another character said, but not actually state it out loud as "What she thought of what he had just said was blah blah blah."
I suggested paralipsis, perhaps in the form "she narrowly avoided saying [x]" or "'That's terrible,' she didn't say." Common examples of paralipsis: "I'm not going to say 'I told you so'" and the "I come to bury Caesar..." speech. I ended up bringing out A Perfect Vacuum by Lem as a reference.
It worked! Paralipsis: I don't have to tell you how great it is.
- Comments:
Posted by Evan at 17 Jun 2009, 10:34AM
my favorite example of this technique is from Shakespeare's sonnets:"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"
-- W.S."Well you just did, Willie"
-- (paraphrasing the aesthetic critique of one of my professors)Posted by Jed at 17 Jun 2009, 01:10PM
And sometimes in this kind of scene in fiction you don't even have to specify what it was they didn't say--sometimes a character biting their tongue, or biting back a retort, or looking away to avoid betraying their thoughts, or similar sorts of silences, can convey to the reader all that needs conveying.
Posted by Sumana at 17 Jun 2009, 02:14PM
Jed, I remember too late that I suggested body language first, and that Toby specifically didn't want to use body language because it would be too diffuse. But yes!
Posted by Yatima at 17 Jun 2009, 05:52PM
It's good, but it's no synecdoche.
Posted by Brendan at 18 Jun 2009, 03:06PM
Rachel, doesn't that go without saying?Sumana, I think I got your point about SF reader strategies when I read "body language... would be too diffuse" and wondered if the character in question was gaseous.
