by Valerie Ipson
This might be the easiest lesson to blog about. Basically, it reminds us of what we learned about rhythm over the last several lessons (all those interesting Greek words known as schemes)and then says, don't overdo it. Whether you're using epistrophe,anaphora, or anadiplosis a little goes a long way.
Here's an example from the book, actually one taken from another book, Flood: A Romance of Our Time:
"The big sycamore by the creek was gone. The willow tangle was gone. The little enclave of untrodden bluegrass was gone. The clump of dogwood on the little rise across the creek--now that, too, was gone,"1
Here the author, Robert Penn Warren, uses epistrophe (repetition) to create a rhythm and then alters the beat at the end for a pleasing effect.
So, the moral of this blog post is: Establish a rhythm in your writing, then vary it because too much of a good thing is, well, too much.
1 MTC, pg 248
