As an editor, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve told authors they have weak villains.  When writing antagonists, authors have to ensure that not only is their badass just as memorable as their protagonist, but that his or her motivations are clear and grounded in aspects of his or her past and personal and psychological development. In real life, we sometmes see people – hopefully from behind the safety or a TV screen, or simply in a newspaper, rather than in real life – who appear to be straight-out evil monsters. We’ve all seen the news stories that made us shudder at the depths of human depravity. Sometimes, there appears to be no rhyme or reason to such cruelty, but dig a little deeper and there is often a profile to such killers: a number of factors (not causes, let’s not make excuses for it!) that  lead to the kind of evil serial killers or psychopaths indulge in.


Most authors are probably a little bit fascinated by the psychology behind killers. What makes them do it? How can they live with themselves? How did they get away with it? When I was writing Cruxim, I wanted Amedeo to be faced with villains who weren’t just out to get him for the hell of it, but who actually had chips in the game. It would have been easy for my Vampire villain, Beltran, to just hate Amedeo because he is a Cruxim, after all, Cruxim eat Vampires. I’m pretty sure gazelles aren't fond of lions: same dynamic. But I wanted Beltran, who is also the primary villain in the ongoing saga and appears in later novels, to have a real reason to hate Amedeo aside from the sheer circumstance of the supernatural food chain.
That reason became Joslyn – primarily Beltran’s love for the mortal-turned-vampire, and her enduring love for Amedeo, even as he forsakes her. I drilled down to what I thought were the major psychological issues Beltran had to deal with (and readers will find out more about some of Beltran’s background issues in book II in the series, Creche). Abandoned by his father as a young boy, Beltran turned his feelings of helplessness into a craving for power. At first, it was just the power to defend himself and those he loved, such as his sister, Evedra. But in his longing for power, it became a kind of lust for him. When he became a Vampire and finally had that power, he was unable to control either the power or the lust. It manifested as a need to dominate others, particularly women. But when he meets Joslyn, he falls in love with her innocence. He hates Amedeo not only because Ame truly represents the kind of pure, honorable power Beltran once craved, but also because Joslyn loves Amedeo for that sense of honor and hates Beltran for the perverted way he abuses his own power.
The other major villain in Cruxim is Dr. Claus Gandler, who I’ve found has given many readers shivers even more than Beltran. When I was stripping his character to the bare bones (which is not a bad analogy for Gandler, given his predilection for torture and amputation), I revisited the biographies of some of the most heinous real-life villains in human history. Seriously, you couldn’t make up the kind of horrors these men inflicted on innocents.

I wish I could scrub some of the things I read while researching Gandler’s character right out of my head. Among these beasts was Josef Mengele, the abhorrent, seriously depraved physician of the Nazi’s Auschwitz concentration camp, a man known as the Angel of Death. Not only did he personally order Jews and those of other ethnic minorities to the gas chambers, Mengele also conducted appalling experiments into heredity upon twins and on others he considered abnormalities of nature, such as those who suffered from dwarfism or heredity conditions. Not even children were spared Mengele’s terrors. I also spent some time studying the hateful practice of travelling “freak shows” in the 18th and 19th centuries. As an Aussie author, I’d read a bit about them before, because unfortunately many Australian Aborigines were taken to Europe and exploited at such shows and “world fairs”, disgustingly portrayed as cannibals or imbecile savages.
I also considered how in real life those who come into close conflict with certain afflictions sometimes come to hate others who suffer from them, and I posited how Gandler might feel if he had a child who suffered from a “freakish” disorder. What if his only son, Fritz, was killed directly as a result of having that disorder: a rare blood condition in which he produced too much blood, making him a target for Vampires? Would Dr Gandler understand other “freaks” (and I use the inverted commas because I recognise that these were simply unlucky people who suffered from medical conditions), or would he hate them and use them to try to get to the bottom of vampirism? Would he exploit them for his own ends?

I decided to make Gandler hate the other “freaks” he collects for all that they represent: his inability to protect his son Fritz and his hatred of hereditary imperfections.That hatred, and his desire to understand how to correct/avoid such conditions and how to end Vampirism, leads to the terrible “experiments” he carries out. It is only when faced with his own imminent death that Gandler makes the decision that will eventually lead to his downfall. To my mind, Gandler is a particularly evil character because of the clinical way he goes about collecting and dissecting his victims. His is a controlled, calculated kind of insanity, which is often much more dangerous than all-out “batshit crazy” (a phrase that I suppose applies to Beltran in many ways).

So, did I achieve what I wanted to do with these villains? Yes and no. In retrospect, I wish I had spent more time letting Amedeo vanquish his foes. But in the heat of a battle, there's not really time to stop and crow over victories, however large or small; all of that must come after, and does to an extent in Creche and Creed. Overall, I feel like I spent the time to make my villains' motivations work, and the number of reviews I received hating my antagonists (or indeed insinuating that I must be some kind of sadist for writing them into existence), must be some indication of the fact that my crook, baddies, beasts and monsters are, at least, convincing. 

Sometimes, authors approach me with perfectly “fine” writing. Grammatically, it’s all good, words are correctly spelled, and there’s nothing overtly wrong with the writer’s voice, but it lacks a certain vigor and vim. Usually, that's because the writer has failed to employ all of the tools available to make their writing sparkle. Below are some useful literary devices that can add another layer to your writing and create subtext, foreshadowing, and depth.

Allegory: A device whereby a story or example is used to represent wider human themes, truths, or behavior. Fables are allegorical, like parables. Sometimes your subplot may have allegorical elements that reflect the wider theme or outcome of your plot.

Analogy: A kind of extended metaphor whereby one thing is compared to a similar object, often several times in different ways. For instance, you might compare a relationship to a sinking ship in a series of interwoven metaphors.

Alliteration: Similar sounds at the start of word (like the repeated S sounds that begin this sentence) create alliteration. It can be used to poetic effect, but be careful not to overuse it. Unintentional alliteration can make writing sound childish because children’s books often make good use of this device. E.g. The westerly wind whistled through the willows as Walter walked toward the wily wombat.

Assonance: A pattern of repeated sounds (especially similar vowel sounds) that enhances euphony. E.g. “The woodland owls hooted ominously” or “A will-o-the-wisp slips listlessly through the glade” (actually, the last example demonstrates both assonance—in the repetition of the “i “sound—and consonance—in the recurring “w” and “l” sounds).

Conceit: When metaphor or figurative language compares one object or event to another that is very different or far more grandiose. A good example comes from Emily Dickinson: “There is no frigate like a book.” Be careful using conceit in your writing; sometimes it can just make readers go “huh?”

Connotation: When choosing words, be mindful of whether they have positive or negative connotation (connotation is a hidden or underlying meaning or bias). For instance, scent, smell, odor, fragrance, perfume, and stench all refer to the olfactory senses, but some (odor, smell, stench) are negative while others (fragrance, perfume, scent) are positive. Word choice and connotation can determine mood.

Consonance: Repeated similar sounds of consonants. Consonance is often used to add poesy to the end of sentences with “eye rhymes” or imperfect rhymes, e.g. The time was past; the life was lost.” This could be considered an example of assonance and consonance, with the repetition of the “i” vowel sound and the “st” consonant pairing, and also of parallelism.

Echoes: Words (often unusual ones) that are used several times at key intervals to refer to an earlier situation or to create an “echo” in the reader’s mind. Often used in foreshadowing. G.R.R Martin echoes “Winter is coming” throughout A Game of Thrones to foreshadow and also to portend encroaching danger, as well as to infer the cynical realism of the Stark family, which has this as their motto.

Euphony: A harmonious arrangement of words to make them pleasing to the ear. When you read your work aloud, you will notice either euphony (it reads well and sounds good with good meter/rhythm) or discordance, where it sounds awkward or jarring.

Foreshadowing: Language, analogy, or events that hint at, or speculate about, later events. For instance, some danger may befall a character and, although tragedy is avoided in that instance, hint at a greater danger yet to come. Foreshadowing is best used sparingly and with subtlety, rather than being too overt. Motif is also often used in foreshadowing. The sight of a crow, for instance, may portend danger to come.

Inference: When a word or object is used to infer a deeper meaning. Character names often infer more about the character themselves. For instance, the surname Stark in G.R.R Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels infers much about the family’s mindset, lifestyle and beliefs.

Literary Allusion: When a text makes reference to another literary text or suggests that a character is akin to another fictional character. A book I edited by bestselling author J Carson Black described one character as “Iago with a buzzcut”—a clever reference to the scheming character from Shakespeare’s Othello, but with a modern twist.

Metaphor: Substituting one object for another, but, unlike conceit, usually one with similar properties. E.g. “She was always crying—a leaky vase filled with dead flowers.” Metaphor figuratively implies that an object IS something else. Its sister is simile, in which something is said to be “like” something else. E.g. “I’m like a dog with a bone. I never can let go of anything.”

Meter: Usually relating to poetry but also relevant to prose, meter is the rhythm created by the number of stressed and unstressed syllables in a passage of writing.

Metonymy: When one word is used to represent another word or concept it is closely related to. The word is derived from the Greek meta (after) and onymia (name) and translates as “a change of name.” For example: The Crown is used to represent the British Monarchy and the Queen; Broadway is sometimes used to refer to the theater industry as a whole; and the White House is sometimes used synonymously to mean US government.

Mood: Mood helps define genre and can also help emphasize theme. Word choice is the biggest contributor to mood. Compare “The girl ambled through the shady forest” with “The girl hurried through the dim woods.” The second sounds ominous; the first as if she is almost skipping along oblivious—even though both say almost the same thing.

Motif: A recurring idea or event woven into a story. Although separate to theme, a motif can infer aspects of theme. If the theme is freedom, a recurring motif throughout might be flying birds. If the theme is revenge, the color green might operate as a motif. The swans in my book Creche operate as a motif for faithful, everlasting love. 

Oxymoron: When two contrasting words or concepts are fused into one, e.g. A false truth, or a loud silence.

Paradox: A statement that contradicts itself but is often nevertheless true. E.g. “Everything changes; everything stays the same,” or “The child is father to the man.”

Parallelism: When syntax, phrases, clauses or even sentences take a similar sequence or format in order to express similarity. E.g. All wisdom comes from lovers, leaders, and learners. All dissent comes from cowards, critics, and cynics.

Personification: When inanimate objects are bestowed with human traits or qualities, e.g. “Spring wears her many-flowered gown” or “The house smiled, its broken railings like gappy teeth" (there’s both personification and simile in the last). A point to note is that spring would not normally be capitalized if you’re talking about the season, but when you use personification, you would capitalize it. Similarly, Mother Nature groaned.

Synecdoche: Closely related to metonymy, synecdoche is when one element of an object is used to refer to the entire associated object and concept. Substituting a heart for an entire person, for instance. Sonnets often use synecdoche. John Donne was particularly fond of this literary tool. Another example would be where a character becomes defined by a single action, such as the Smoking Man from X-files. The saying, “All hands on deck!” whereby “hands” are substituting for the actual workers themselves is another example of synecdoche. Using “steel” for sword, “wheels” for car, or “threads” for clothes are other examples.

Some time back, I wrote a post on literary devices and techniques that bestselling writers often incorporate in their novels. At the time, I meant to go on and do a second post, and maybe even a third or fourth, but, as is often the case, life (particularly one little three-year-old life) got in the way. So when I finally snatched up another child-free day, I knew just how to spend my time: writing another post on literary devices, this time focusing on ones that sound extremely peculiar. So here you go … enjoy.

CAESURA. Derived from the Latin, the name of this device comes from the same base as the word “caesarian,” so it is associated with “cutting” or “slicing” off part of a sentence or a rhythm (in poetry) into two distinct parts that still remain intrinsically joined. In modern fiction, you are most likely to see caesura used with an em dash (—) or exclamation mark to create a long pause at the “departure” point. Such a pause adds dramatic or emotional intensity, and is especially effective to convey surprise.
For instance, “Gone!—yet his bed was still warm.” In poetry, caesura follows the patterns of speech and is the breath we usually take in the middle of a line (known as a “medial” caesura in those instances, although it can also occur the beginning or end of a line). It is usually represented by // in poetic works. In Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem “Mother and Poet,” initial caesura is introduced at the first line.
“Dead! //One of them shot by the sea in the east”
Caesura is said to be feminine if the pause follows an unstressed syllable, and masculine if it follows a stressed syllable.
CATACHRESIS. From the Greek for “misuse,” as a literary technique catachresis can be said to be a hodgepodge of devices that serves to create impossible imagery. Think mixed metaphor, but with hyperbole and metonymy thrown in. Poet e.e. cummings often used catachresis, jumbling together various senses. For example: “The voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses.”
Of course, eyes don’t have a voice, so this is classic catachresis. It has the effect of making you stop and think about the words, which means you focus on the words voice and deeper. Coupled with the overwhelming imagery of eyes and roses, it has a powerful pull, even if eyes don’t really have a voice, strictly speaking.
Shakespeare also used catachresis rather frequently, such as “to take arms against a sea of troubles” (a sea can’t be fought with weapons) and “I will speak daggers to her”—both from Hamlet. Although entirely figurative, because you can’t literally speak daggers and a sea doesn’t really have “troubles” (a case of personification), readers have no problem imagining what is meant. For the most part, you want to use catachresis sparingly, but in some instances, particularly if you’re using it in confusing action scenes to give a jumbled emotional effect or to portray conflicting or confused emotions, or even just to create vivid but unusual metaphors (again, sparingly or it will seem like you’re a serial metaphor mangler), it can work very well.

CHIASMUS. It sounds more at home in a list of mythological beasts, but chiasmus is a combination of two parallel yet inverted phrases or concepts. Usually, words or phrases are repeated in a reverse order in chiasmus, which accounts for the device’s name: referring to the Greek letter chi, represented as a “cross” in Greek, which is indicative of the “crossover” nature of this device.
For instance, Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” or Byron’s “Pleasure’s a sin, and sometimes sin’s a pleasure” are both examples of chiasmus. And, of course, there’s always the ever-sassy Mae West with, “It’s not the men in my life, it’s the life in my men.” (Go, Mae!)
Often overlapping with antimetabole (which will feature in another such post on some other day, when I can eke out time), it doesn’t always require an identical swapover, only a certain parallelism. For instance, “Naked I rose from the earth; to the grave I fall clothed.” Even spoonerisms can sometimes be used to create the effect of chiasmus, such as in this Randy Hanzlick song, “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me/Than a frontal lobotomy.” (And so would I, thank you very much!)
LITOTES (pronounced Li-to-tees) are negative expressions of affirmation, and are sometimes more simply known as ironical understatement. More often than not, they are used to soften something that might otherwise have a negative connotation. E.g. “She was not a bad poet” also implies that she wasn’t a very good one, but the former is far kinder.
In today’s vernacular, you might commonly hear litotes such as: “How are you today?” Answer: “Not bad.” Litotes such as this are very common in Australian English, and Aussie comedian Carl Baron performs a skit about Strine (the Australian language), which you can watch here if you’re so inclined. The language “litotes” part starts at about 1.44.
One of the most famous of all litotes is the Rolling Stones song “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” which is a double negative that of course, really means they’re likely getting plenty of satisfaction—and with Mick and Keith’s track record, who can argue? So there you have it. Four weirdly named devices to think about as you edit that first draft. Watch this space for more posts on literary devices coming soon, including antimetabole, anastrophe, hyperbaton, and zeugma. Happy word-smithing!
Thanks for reading, and please feel free to share any of your own examples of the above devices in the comments.

My author friend Deb Nam-Krane, who writes contemporary romance, once asked me to be part of her #ISawThatComing blog hop to discuss whether being a writer ruins all sense of suspense, given there are only a certain number of plots in fiction and screenplays.

I’m usually too busy writing and editing to watch a great deal of TV, and I’m a shocker for multi-tasking through movies, so I’m going to concentrate on novels, specifically on how I use foreshadowing to work to create suspense in my own writing, and how my subconscious mind often totally sees things coming in my own novels long before I do.

It is true that many good novels follow a formula. Most can be boiled down to a few standard plots or tropes. As an editor, it’s part of my job to detect where a novel is heading and to ensure that each scene follows a logical,interesting path to that place, or, conversely, that a novel deviates so markedly from its purported path that it will shock or surprise readers, taking them to places they never anticipated. It takes sleight of hand to generate suspense in a novel: the old magician’s trick of making a reader focus in on something else while you slip the rabbit in the hat for later. The connotation of words, semiotics and symbolism, foreshadowing, flashback and echoing are the tools writers use to create a false sense of security, or to drop hints in their novels.

If you’ve read my shorts Cage Life and Crows & Other Beasts, and especially if you’ve read Cruxim and the Dark Guardians trilogy, you’ll know that I love to throw twists and turns into my novels. Readers have often asked me if I plan or plot out my books in detail. Mostly, I briefly work out major plot points and develop the sense of an ending'. Often, the twists and turns in my work appear organically, and sometimes the ending changes as a result. In other words, I often don’t see my own twists coming until I write them. But how, readers ask, could those actions appear out of the blue when there are little clues throughout your text? The answer is that those scattered clues and nods toward motif are foreshadowing, which I've added in a very calculated way. I insert them at second draft to provide the reader with signposts.

The motif of the swans in Creche was very much a surprise. When I started writing, I didn’t know Skylar would lead me to a nest, and I certainly hadn’t conceived of the link to the Sibylim. The idea actually came from out of left field, as I watched a ballet performance of Swan Lake on TV. It worked so well that it seemed as if it should have been there from the moment I first started writing Cruxim.

I had needed a good explanation for how there were so many Cruxim, given their strange lifecycle, and the story of the swans worked beautifully and tied into the creation of the harpies I knew I wanted to introduce in Creed. Sometimes, solutions just fall into your lap! Many twists in the Dark Guardians trilogy were ideas that leaped out at me as I ate breakfast, or tried to sleep, or as I watched something totally random and seemingly disconnected to my work.

In knowing the motivations of my characters in Cruxim, I was also able to slip in words or phrases that would become more significant later, such as Beltran’s goading use of familial terms in scenes between him and Amedeo, some of the terminology used by Basil in Cage Life to hint that things might not be exactly what they seem with that narrator, or the snake imagery and sense of growing foreboding in Crows.

When I get that building sense of suspense, I like to let it carry me along with it. I knew very early on, for instance, the relationship between Beltran and Amedeo, and that the incunabulum had a role to play in bringing them together somehow. I also knew that there was a black hole in Skylar’s story before she found Amedeo on the beach. How did she know about him? How did she just 'happen' to be there?  I used that 'black hole' in which I knew Skylar’s actions and no one else did to later make her a more sympathetic character. That enabled me to manipulate Amedeo’s impression of her, and thus the reader’s impression and create a love-hate dichotomy early in their relationship. In a way, I made Ame a slightly unreliable narrator, and Skylar one too. In Ame’s case, it was not because he wasn’t honest, but because he honestly didn’t know about his past. In Skylar’s case … well, it was all of those secrets. A girl’s got to have secrets, after all.

Using unreliable narrators is a great way of manipulating suspense. It worked brilliantly in Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, as the reader first came to trust Nick and then saw him exposed by Amy or by his own foibles, and vice versa. It is only later that the reader sees just how manipulative each character really is, and sees Gillian Flynn for the exceptional puppet master she is in setting up the whole sordid story.

Some readers were critical of Cruxim for my holding back. They felt it was an oversight to not explore the nature of Amedeo’s character in detail, rather than a deliberate mechanism to keep him in the dark for now. But  I knew that I could not divulge information Ame himself did not yet know (at least not without slipping out of his point of view) and that withholding that information from him and from the reader would enable me the element of surprise later, when I wanted to reveal who he was and how he had been born and raised. I also wanted that information to come as a shock to him as much as anyone else. Because he could then react to it in exactly the way I know Ame would have, with anger and doubt and self-loathing.

Of course, withholding information from the reader doesn’t always mean they won’t guess it either. And that is what #ISawThatComing is all about. One of my favourite beta readers guessed something big I had plotted out for the end of Creed while she was beta reading Creche. She totally saw it coming, yet as far as I know, from reviews and reader feedback, no on else has commented on it being obvious.

​If you’ve read Dark Guardians, please do stop by and comment on anything that you  totally saw coming. If you didn’t see anything coming, I’d love to know what was your biggest surprise