Mark Forsyth: 13 Techniques to Improve Your Writing | How I Write

Summary

Podcast Summary: How I Write — Mark Forsyth: 13 Techniques to Improve Your Writing

Host: David Perell
Guest: Mark Forsyth (author of The Elements of Eloquence and Rhyme and Reason)
Date: August 5, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into Mark Forsyth's extensive knowledge of classical and modern rhetoric, exploring thirteen techniques for making writing more memorable, beautiful, and enchanting. Drawing on examples from Shakespeare, the Beatles, Taylor Swift, political speeches, and even pop culture, Forsyth and Perell break down these timeless tools for writers at all levels. The conversation spans figures of rhetoric, the importance of rhythm and poetry, and the philosophy behind writing for enchantment rather than utility.

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Key Discussion Points & Techniques

1. Polyptoton (Same Word, Different Forms)

• Definition: Using the same root word in different grammatical forms for effect.
• Examples:
  • Shakespeare: “Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds”
  • Taylor Swift: “Players gonna play, play, play, play, play…”
  • The Bible: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us.”
• Why Use It:
  • “It sticks in people's minds. It makes a phrase memorable in a way that it wouldn’t be otherwise.” — Mark Forsyth [04:07]
• Memorable Moment: The ease of slipping polyptoton into everyday writing: “Podcast this podcast, build the building, dream the dream, walk the walk, talk the talk.” [03:49]

2. Chiasmus (Symmetrical Reversal)

• Definition: Mirroring concepts in reverse order.
• Examples:
  • JFK: “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”
  • Snoop Dogg: “With my mind on my money and my money on my mind.”
• Purpose:
  • “It becomes a great memorable phrase; it clicks and works with us.” — Forsyth [06:04]

3. Isocolon (Balanced Phrases)

• Definition: Sequences of phrases of equal length.
• Examples:
  • JFK: “Not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard.”
  • “Roses are red, violets are blue.”
• Purpose:
  • “It makes you sound more reasonable… a nice symmetry that builds up.” [06:53]

4. Tricolon (The Rule of Three)

• Definition: Grouping ideas in threes for rhythm and memorability.
• Examples:
  • “Blood, sweat, and tears”
  • “The good, the bad, and the ugly”
  • Lincoln: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
• Quote:
  • “Our memory helps us. It improves phrases.” — Forsyth [11:35]
  • Obama used 21 tricolons in one victory speech [15:51]

5. Anaphora & Epistrophe (Repetition at Sentence Start/End)

• Anaphora: Beginning successive clauses with the same word (“We shall fight them…” — Churchill) [17:42]
• Epistrophe: Ending successive clauses with the same word (“Yes, we can.” — Obama) [16:01]
• Purpose:
  • “It’s a great way of building a crowd up… By using anaphora, [Churchill] makes it sound inspiring, despite prophesying despair.” [18:02]
  • “Epistrophe is very obsessed, monotonically... wherever you start, you always end in the same place.” [20:00]
• Memorable Moment: Discussion of Beatles’ “Yesterday” as a song structured around epistrophe [21:57]

6. Synesthesia (Mixing Senses)

• Definition: Describing one sense in terms of another.
• Examples:
  • “She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.” [22:54]
  • “She looked the way chocolate tastes.”
• Purpose:
  • “It appeals more to emotion than reason.” — Forsyth [24:42]

7. Personification (Giving Human Traits to Abstracts)

• Definition: Attributing human characteristics to non-human elements.
• Examples:
  • Shakespeare: “It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.” [28:26]
• Purpose:
  • “You need to have a bit of fun with personification... You can dress it up.” [27:09]

8. Paradox (Seeming Contradictions)

• Definition: A statement that seems self-contradictory but carries truth.
• Examples:
  • Oscar Wilde: “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”
  • George Bernard Shaw: “One tragedy is not getting what one wants, the other is getting it.”
  • Jesus: “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.” [47:03]
• Purpose:
  • “If you can make a sensible observation sound like it doesn’t make sense, then it will really stick in the memory.” [41:44]
• Quote:
  • “We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.” — Wilde [41:01]

9. Scesis Onomaton (No Main Verb)

• Definition: Creating punchy phrases by omitting the main verb.
• Examples:
  • Dickens’ Bleak House: “London.”
  • Star Trek: “Space, the final frontier.” [38:27]
• Purpose:
  • “Dropping the main verb can be very powerful… It just grabs you.” [38:57]

10. Adenaton (Impossibility in Overstatement)

• Definition: Over-the-top hyperboles for effect.
• Examples:
  • “I’ll love you till China and Africa meet, and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street.” (W. H. Auden) [52:09]
  • “Labour isn’t working.” [45:06]
• Quote:
  • “If you’re going to do it, really do it.” — Forsyth [54:43]

11. Hyperbole (Exaggeration)

• Definition: Exaggerating for effect or humor.
• Examples:
  • “I feel like I’m on the surface of the sun.”
  • Yo mama jokes: “She stared into an orange juice bottle for 20 minutes because it said concentrate.” [52:09]

12. Grammar and Glamour (The Magic of Words)

• Etymology: Grammar and glamour share a root, with grammar originally referring to spells, giving us the sense that words can enchant.
• Quote:
  • “Grammar, glamour, same word pronounced slightly differently… to enchant, to make things magical.” [55:33]

13. Rhythm and Poetry – Enjoyment and Intuition

• Advice:
  • “When you’re reading poetry, always try and read it aloud, even under your breath—try and get that rhythm to go.” [65:23]
  • “Poetry is not that complicated. People think you need an English degree. Shakespeare wrote for the mass market.” [68:08]
• Quote:
  • “The thing about theatre is it just keeps going and you will keep understanding what’s going on.” [70:49]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Writing for Beauty:
  “Don’t write just to be efficient and get the meaning across. Write to enchant.” — Forsyth [29:27]
• On Overdoing Rhetoric:
  “It’s like how many spices and how many side dishes before it becomes a bit silly… those first few flakes of chili are always going to be good.” [35:57]
• On Cultural Saturation:
  “We swim in the waters of these rhetorical tools. They’re just everywhere.” — Forsyth [49:40]
• On the Purpose of Rhythm:
  “Poetry is just like music. You enjoy it, you vibe out to it… the mystery is part of the fun.” [68:08, 70:49]
• On Chapter Transitions:
  “I always want to be looking towards the next chapter in the last line—so it becomes a natural flow and leaves you wanting more.” [71:53]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 04:07 — The stickiness of polyptoton.
• 06:04 — Chiasmus defined, with examples.
• 11:35 — Tricolon and the “rule of three” (with Churchill/Lincoln).
• 17:42 — Churchill’s anaphora: “We shall fight…” speech.
• 19:57 — Epistrophe in music: The Beatles’ “Yesterday.”
• 22:54 — Synesthesia: Sensory blending in writing.
• 27:09 — Personification in Shakespeare.
• 41:44 — Paradox as a tool for memorability.
• 45:06 — Paradoxes and political advertising.
• 52:09 — Hyperbole and Adenaton in jokes and poetry.
• 55:33 — Grammar and glamour—words as magic.
• 65:23 — The rhythm of poetry and reading aloud.

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• Write to Enchant: Don’t settle for plainness—make your writing rhythmic, magical, and memorable.
• Borrow from the Masters: These techniques are used by everyone from Shakespeare to Taylor Swift; they’re timeless tools.
• Enjoy the Process: Rhythm, rhyme, and rhetoric should be fun—a source of delight for both writer and reader.
• Let Mystery Stay: Not everything needs to be overanalyzed; the fun and enchantment of writing often come from what’s left unsaid or ambiguous.

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Final Quote

“Poetry is just like music. You enjoy it, you vibe out to it… the mystery is part of the fun.” — Mark Forsyth [68:08, 70:49]

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(This summary covers the episode’s central themes and insights, omitting sponsor messages and introductory chatter, staying true to the lively and insightful tone of the conversation.)

Transcript

[A]

Mark Forsyth has spent years studying how great writers piece words together. People like Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde, but also musicians like the Beatles and Taylor Swift. And for him, it all comes down to these figures of rhetoric, these timeless tools that you can use to make your writing more memorable and enjoyable. And so I said, hey, Mark, I want you to break them down for me one by one. What is the tool? How does it work? When do you use it? Why is it good to apply it? And what you're going to find is that these tools are just going to make you a better writer. You're going to have a lot more fun when you write because you're going to be so much more playful whenever you're crafting words. Well, Mark, last time we did this, we went through, I think, three or four figures of rhetoric. And now what I want to do is go through, like, 10 or 11. This from your book, Elements of Eloquence.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And where I want to start, I want to start with polypoton, polyptotum.

[B]

They all have. The thing about the figures of the rhetoric is they all have slightly unpronounceable Greek names. And the Greek name doesn't matter at all as long as you remember what the thing was. So when I was writing that chapter two, I had to put polyptoton at the top of it. But polyptoton's really simple. It's just when you use the same word in different parts of speech. So if you dream a dream, that's polyptoton, because you're dreaming. Verb. The dream noun. I'll give you an example from Shakespeare's sonnet. This is one of the greatest of Shakespeare sonnets. It's often read at weddings. It's a classic, goes down in all time. And it goes, oh, let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment. Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. So that's alters when it alteration finds alter alteration bends with the remover to remove. Or you'll find the same thing in Macbeth. Is this a dagger that I see before me? The handle towards my hand. Handle, hand. Same root, same kind of essential word just being used a little bit differently. And you. I mean, that's Shakespeare, the greatest poet of the 16th, 17th century. But if you want to skip right up to now, and you can go to Taylor Swift, who built a whole song around this, with like, the. Is going to play, play, play, play, play.

[A]

And the haters.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Yeah, baby. I'm just going to shake, shake, shake,

[B]

shake, shake will indeed shake it off, shake it off. But you have this all over the place. You've got. There's like WB Yeats, we are the dreamers of dreams. And then there's the song Dream a Little Dream of Me. That's always. It's.

[A]

It's dream on, little dreamer.

[B]

Yeah, Dream, Dream gets polyptotoned more than almost anything else. But between Shakespeare, Taylor Swift, or Jesus for that matter, top wordsmith Jesus, as well as being the Son of God and all that sort of stuff. But in one of his better known little compositions called the Lord's Prayer, goes, our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us. So it's day and daily. Trespasses, trespass, Just using the same word in a different sense within the sentence, just mucking around with it. And, you know, once something's been used by Shakespeare, Taylor Swift and Jesus, you know, it's got to be quite good, got to be quite saleable at that point and has, you know, the divine imprimatur on it. And it's so easy to do. Like, podcast this podcast, come on, build the building, dream the dream, walk the walk, talk the talk. It's a very easy one to just slip into your writing any way you

[A]

want so I understand what it is. Help me understand why I should use it. Like, what's the benefit of this figure of rhetoric?

[B]

It sticks in people's minds. It. It makes a phrase memorable in a way that it wouldn't be otherwise. If you think of there's a Beatles album, Please Please Me, a Beatles song and an album, and if you said, can you please me? That wouldn't be nearly as memorable. It wouldn't stick in the same way. And, you know, I'd like you to dream of me is not as memorable as dream a little dream of me. And what you're trying to do when you're writing is you're always trying to make that phrase that sticks in the person's mind, sticks with the reader. And often that's just to do with making a little twist to how you say the sentence. And you don't need to have anything new to say. It's the important thing. And this thing about the figures of rhetoric, which we're not talking about, which is what we are talking about, what we aren't talking about is there's a whole massive subject of rhetoric and arrangement and making big arguments and arranging proofs and stuff like that. But the figures of the rhetoric are just ways of rephrasing a single sentence and making it stick in the mind much more.

[A]

What's cool about this one too is it's so simple. I was thinking if I was a coach, right, like run on little runner, sprint on little sprinter, write on little writer. It's a much more memorable kind of encouragement than run, sprint, write whatever it

[B]

is, write until it's written. That's just a nice little phrase, not better than write until you've finished.

[A]

So this, in that way, kind of reminds me of chiasmus, where both of them are just ways of arranging information that make things more memorable, stick in your mind.

[B]

Yeah, that's all you're trying to do with the figures of retrochemism.

[A]

And the difference between this and chiasmus

[B]

is what chiasmus is when your things are arranged symmetrically. So it's ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country or mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind. Those are both John F. Kennedy or Snoop Dogg. With my mind on my money and my money on my mind. It's something that clicks. It works with us. It becomes a great memorable phrase. If you read through JFK's inauguration speech, it's all chiasmus. It's a way of making things memorable, making them symmetrical and producing something beautiful.

[A]

We choose to go to the moon not because it's easy, but because it's hard.

[B]

Chiasmus, that's not chiasmus.

[A]

What is that?

[B]

Oddly enough, not because it's easy, but because it's hard is a bit of an isocolon, which we will come to later. That's the simple thing of weighting phrases next to each other so that they're same length. Not because it's easy, but because it's hard. And you could have said you could phrase the same thing because it's hard. Not easy or not because it's easy, but hard or but There's a nice phrasing of the weighting, the symmetry of not because it's easy, but because it's hard. Roses are red, violets are blue, it's the equal length phrases. It makes you sound a lot more reasonable in a way. On the one hand you're saying this and on the other hand you're saying that It's a nice symmetry that builds up, not the absolute symmetry of chiasmus. Which is T for 2 and 2 for T. But a more a general weighting. It's like. It's like chiasmus, but maybe a little bit toned down.

[A]

Okay, so walk me through the first three that we've spoken about. So we talked about isocolon, chiasmus and polypopton. So bring me back to what do they all have in common? And then the differences between them.

[B]

What they all have in common is they are setting one thing against another in contrast. So isocolon, as you say, it's two phrases of the same length and just being weighed against each other. And then chiasmus, it's two symmetrical phrases. Live to eat, don't eat to live. Is that the way around it? No, sorry, that's the other way around. Eat to live, don't live to eat. And. And on the other hand, the polyptoton is weighing two different uses of the same word in different ways against each other. Give us this day our daily bread for love is not love that alters when it alteration finds. So in a sense, they're all. But they're all just playing with different ways of phrasing the same thing, making it more memorable, making it fit into. Fit into your mind. As I say these, these things have worked eternally. I was sort of joking about Taylor Swift and Jesus and Shakespeare, but it's worthwhile pointing out that these, these people are 2000 years apart and they're still using that same method to make the same memorable phrases. Moses, wife in the Bible. Now, now we're back to 3,000 years ago or more. She says, I have been a stranger in a strange land. And that's a beautiful, beautiful phrase. It's just taking the word strange and mixing it with its cognate word, stranger, and you get something absolutely lovely and memorable. And if you just said, I have been an illegal alien, that's not the same thing. It wouldn't resonate in the same way. But stranger in a strange land is a beautiful phrase that we are still using. I think there's a heavy metal album called Stranger in a Strange Land, but I can't remember who it's by.

[A]

When you think of school, what comes to mind? For me, it was lectures, homework, sitting at a desk. And the worst part is it doesn't even work. 54% of Americans read below a sixth grade level. That's over half of Americans. We need something new. And that's why I'm excited to have Alpha School as the flagship sponsor for how I write. At Alpha, you go to school and do all your academics at only two hours per day so that then you can spend the rest of the day learning life skills like launching a business, writing a musical or giving a TED talk. You know, the kind of things that make you a capable and well rounded person. And it's working. They have academics figured out. Alpha classes test in the top 1% nationally. And more than 90% of Alpha students say they love school now. I used to live in Austin. Alpha School started and I was consistently blown away with what was happening there. I personally mentored a bunch of Alpha students and what stood out to me is how much the team believes in the potential of kids way more than what I ever got in school. Alpha's approach and the success it's already having is why it's the Most talked about K12 school in the world right now. And it's also where I want to send my kids to school one day. So if you want to learn more, go to go Alpha School. Howirite? You know, I was going to ask you about titles later on, but Polypoton seems like it's very rich for coming up with titles.

[B]

Yes, yes, definitely.

[A]

Yeah. Because you can get so much in just three, four, five words.

[B]

Yeah. Dream the dream, Walk the walk.

[A]

Stranger in a strange land. Tricolon.

[B]

Tell me about that. Tricolon is just the rule of three, which is we like things in threes. We like the good, the bad and the ugly. Things like that. We love blood, sweat and tears. Blood, sweat and tears, by the way, is a sort of quote from Winston Churchill, but it's not what he actually said. What Churchill said on his first speech in Parliament as Prime Minister is he told the House of Commons, he said, I have nothing to offer you. Blood, toil, tears and sweat. Perfectly good phrase, but not as good as blood, sweat and tears. Because sometimes your. Your memory helps us. It improves phrases. And this is the thing about being memorable, it's the ones that stick in our minds. I think I remember last time we were talking about, there was a moment I surprised you because it's talking about the line in the wizard of Oz, Flymoprite's fly, which does not exist in the wizard of Oz. And yet we all remember it being there, some of the Wicked Witch of the west shouting it, but she doesn't. But our memory will improve these things. You date blood, toil, tears and sweat, and you narrow it down to the three, the Tricolon, where you usually have a little twist at the end. So classic Tricolon is the good, the bad and the ugly, where you go from 1, 2, but then the third one twists it. The good and bad moral things. Ugly as an aesthetic thing. But you have a lot of that with things like it's quite a totalitarian government one, because you have. When you have. The French Revolution produced liberty, egalite, fraternity, but then the Nazis produced einreich, ein Volk, einfhrer,

[A]

which means.

[B]

Which means one state, one people, one leader, ein or Ike, ein folk Einfjord.

[A]

So tricolon with that, the third one doesn't seem like a surprise.

[B]

No, much less so.

[A]

So sometimes tricolons are the same thing three times, sometimes they are the same thing twice, and then the third one

[B]

breaks, and then the twist. Yeah, the twist is always a nice thing to add on. But no, you don't. You don't always need it. It's just that it's. I mean, people talk about a sort of a rule of three in writing all over the place. You often have. It's in the structure of jokes. For example, you have, like three guys who are stuck on a desert island, and the genie appears, and first one does something normal, second something asks for something normal, and third asks for something weird. And that's the structure of the joke.

[A]

Well, I was thinking, as you said, tricolon, roses are red, violets are blue, and then you could insert whatever you want. And then even better if it rhymes with blue for that final word. Yeah.

[B]

Water is wet. How do you do?

[A]

I think I heard one growing up. I can't believe this was coming to mind. Roses are red, violets are blue. If it weren't for Christmas, we would all be a Jew.

[B]

I've never heard that one.

[A]

I don't know. That's just what came to mind. But that's. That has the.

[B]

The pattern. Yeah. Yes. The rule of three, which is just runs through writing all the time, and especially in folk tales, you'll often have. In the destruction of folktales, you'll have three brothers, and the two elder brothers always get it wrong, and then the younger brother gets it right somehow because he's been nice to the magical unicorn or whatever it happens to be.

[A]

Lies. Damn.

[B]

Lies and statistics.

[A]

Yes. So the magic comes from the surprise.

[B]

Yeah, if you can do it with a twist in the end, that's perfect.

[A]

Now, should the third one be longer than the first two? Is that part of the thing?

[B]

I think so, yes. Possibly. I mean. I mean, certainly it's true of, like, the good, the bad and the ugly. Lies. Damn. Lies. Ugly is just adding one syllable on lies. Damn Lies and statistics is a similar movement to the slightly longer one.

[A]

Yeah. You mentioned statesman Obama had 21 tricolons in his victory speech.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

He's the government of the people, by the people, for the people.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, Obama's speeches tended to be filled with the figures of rhetoric, things like there's apistrophe, which is ending every sent everything with the same words. So, yes, we can. One of his very big speeches was to say, can we do? Yes, we can. Can we do? Yes, we can. And always ending up in that same way.

[A]

Yeah. Here's Lincoln. Government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So what's going on there?

[B]

Saying the same thing in three ways. He's divided it up. He could have said, democracy shall not perish from the earth, and that would not have been as memorable. But there he's going, of the people, by the people, for the people. He makes it that, that, that rule of three, that tricolon, each, each little bit of it ending in the word people. And that really produces something very, very powerful.

[A]

Yeah. I'm getting the sense of like, boom, boom, boom. A rhythm, a predictability. And from that it.

[B]

The memory shall not perish from the earth. Yes.

[A]

A fine woman, a fair woman, a sweet woman.

[B]

Yes. That's a Shakespeare, I think. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine. That's from Casablanca, and it's a great one. As you move up from the gin joints to the towns to the world, it gets bigger and bigger as the three go on.

[A]

Right there, there's a sense of progression. And from that drama.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is that what's going on with Churchill's. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight in the fields.

[B]

Yes. Although that's an odd one. So that's one called Anaphora, and that

[A]

one was the original quote.

[B]

So he says, and if it's in it, I'll tell you, the thing to watch out for is the speech he gave. When we were losing the Second World War, the British army had been turned back in, France was having to retreat across the English Channel. Everything looked hopeless. And Churchill says, we shall fight them in the sea, we shall fight them in the air, we shall fight them on the beaches, which meant the British beaches. And if you watch it's getting closer and closer. We shall fight them in the fields, we shall fight them in the cities. And by this time, the Germans are in London, then we shall fight them in the hills. We shall never surrender. I forget the exact wording of the speech, but he's roughly telling you, the Germans can invade and we will keep fighting. But there's this rhythmic thing that goes with starting every sentence with the same words which somehow carries you away. I mean, he needed that big bit of rhetoric because he's basically saying. He was saying to the British people, we will die fighting. He wasn't promising them victory there. He was promising them death on the battlefield, death in the British fields, death in the hills. I mean, it didn't happen, thank God. But that's what that speech is promising. But by using the anaphora thing, which is a great way of building a crowd up, he manages to make it sound somehow inspiring. The we will fight, we will fight, despite the fact he's prophesying despair. And yet we remember that as the great inspiring speech which it was. And he manages to push through it with the anaphora.

[A]

So walk me through. When you're doing epistrophe, that one where you're ending the this sentence or the parts of the sentence over and over again with the same word, what is the tool that you have there? Like, what is the purpose of doing that?

[B]

Epistrophe is a funny one, especially because it's used so much in pop music and rock music. Because pretty much every pop song is structured along the lines of verse and then the same chorus or the same words at the end. So if you think of the song Jailhouse Rock, it always ends up with. Each verse is different, but then it ends up with was dancing to the jailhouse rock. He keeps ending up in the same place in Sting. Every breath you take he will always end up watching you in this obsessive way. Apistrophe is a very kind of obsessive, monomaniacal whatever. However I start off, I always end up here. I always end up in the same place wherever you start, because it's the verse, chorus, verse, chorus system which always ends up in the same place. Whereas yesterday is a funny one, because John Lennon complained about that song because it was written by Paul McCartney. But John Lennon complained that the song goes nowhere. And it's true that it goes nowhere. The first verse begins with the word yesterday and ends with the word yesterday. It's yesterday all my troubles seem so far away now it looks as though they're here to stay oh, I believe in yesterday and then the second verse does exactly the same word with suddenly. It's the same thing with suddenly. Suddenly there's a shadow hanging over me I'M not half the man I used to be. Or Yesterday came suddenly. And then the third verse does the same thing with yesterday again. So it's very much a song about somebody being stuck in the same place. He starts on the word yesterday, finishes on the word yesterday. He starts on suddenly. He finishes on Sunday, starts on yesterday, finishes on yesterday. He doesn't get anywhere.

[A]

Well, what strikes me from that example is that through aesthetically, you can communicate something that enhances the words that you're trying to say. So you could say words about being stuck, and you can aesthetically show the stuckness by going from yesterday suddenly back to yesterday and then having the bookends be the same. Because the circle closes where it began.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. Which is why it's such a haunting, beautiful, memorable song.

[A]

But he didn't like it.

[B]

John Lennon didn't like it. Paul McCartney did. Or John Lennon said that he could. John Lennon complained an awful lot. He really did. But he. That was his complaint about the song Yesterday, which I think may have been born of a little bit of jealousy there.

[A]

Synesthesia.

[B]

Synesthesia is a very weird one, I should point out. Synesthesia is also considered a mental condition some people have. But it's when you mix up the. The senses. There's a lovely line in Raymond Chandler novel, the Great Detective Writing. It says, she smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight. And it's. Yeah, I think everyone wants to smell that way. If you could actually find the guy

[A]

in the elevator with me yesterday did not smell that.

[B]

We are in a heat wave. To be fair,

[A]

we'll leave it at that. So tell me about that sentence.

[B]

It's a very clever sentence because it just.

[A]

It.

[B]

Because it moves you from one sense to another. It. It takes the. The sense of smell, which is very hard to talk about, actually, when you're writing, and then expresses it using a visual. And if you can. If you can do that in a surprising way, you can. You can do beautiful things. You can say he looked like a symphony by Mozart or something. If you want to describe something. Yeah. You could say his suit and tie was harmonious as a Mozart symphony or something like that. You can make surprising jumps between the senses.

[A]

You could say she felt like the flowers blooming at springtime.

[B]

Yeah, it's lovely.

[A]

Does that work?

[B]

Yeah, I think that works. It doesn't. It doesn't work in a. It's not a precise way of talking, but it's a way of. It's a thing which we get. Which we understand as you jump from the One sentence to the other.

[A]

It appeals more to emotion than reset.

[B]

Yes, absolutely. It's a paradoxical thing. But we like paradox. We like things which don't quite work.

[A]

If you were coaching me on synesthesia, how would I think through this? Would I get the different senses and start comparing them? How would I actually implement this?

[B]

I think, yeah, you take two senses and try and jump from the one to the other. Try picking taste and looks.

[A]

Yeah, you could have like all these adjectives and all these adjectives.

[B]

She looked the way chocolate tastes.

[A]

Mmm.

[B]

Or the croissant tasted the way Marilyn Monroe looks.

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

Take across the senses, see what you can do, where you can go. Because it's not something we think about doing normally. We tend to. Especially on smell and taste. You tend to produce some very sort of bad or not very memorable writings. If you just try and describe smells in terms of smells. If you would try and describe the. The air that day smelt of hay with a little bit of grass and some salt from the sea in the distance. And it all becomes. You find this on the back of wine bottles actually all the time as it goes. Like hints of walnut and badger and this notes of raspberry. This doesn't paint a picture to me at all. It may be accurate, but it doesn't paint a picture. Incidentally, just as a little writing tip, not mine, I got this from the great novelist Chilly Cooper, who died recently and I think her novel Rivals has become a massive hit TV series of late. She once told me that you should, when you're. When she's writing a novel, she said you should always make sure you've got all the senses in there. Each chapter. Something touch something, scent something, taste something. I mean, we tend to write visual stuff and often forget about the other bits.

[A]

Personification, let's talk about that.

[B]

You need to have a little bit of fun with personification.

[A]

You're not having enough fun.

[B]

Yeah, have a bit of fun. And I think most people don't sort of dare to do it these days in the way that Shakespeare did. But you can dress it up. For example, what's fire eyed Fury wearing? He could be, you know, be dressed in barbed wire. And then you start, you go from there, if you see what I mean.

[A]

So it seems like personification can kind of grow and grow into allegory then.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. It's heading on that way. But it's a thing you could have fun with. Fire eyed fury dressed in barbed wire, blood dripping from the spikes.

[A]

And what made time and death be the things that Shakespeare personified so much.

[B]

He's very interested in personifying death. It's an odd one if you go through every reference to death in Shakespeare. He often has Shakespeare. It's a sort of skeleton that eats people and drags them off to the secret house of death by Nantertine. Cleopatra. He seems to have imagined this, this figure and imagined him properly.

[A]

Do you want to read this one? Oh, beware.

[B]

Oh yeah. Oh beware my lord of jealousy. It is the green eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on. That idea of a green eyed monster suddenly, suddenly pulls you out of just saying. You could just said beware of jealousy. Don't, don't be jealous, make you do silly things. Whereas beware of jealousy. It is the green eyed monster that mocks the meat it feeds on is suddenly to create an image of green eyed jealousy that has lasted to this day. In a way I wonder if there's

[A]

something intrinsic to monsters that they're green.

[B]

Yeah. Reptiles. Yes. Well, Welsh dragons always read. Chinese dragons I'm not that sure about. They're different breeds to the Welsh ones. British dragons are red I think. But then Game of Thrones dragons were green, weren't they?

[A]

Yeah, there's some of them to these things.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The book of Ecclesiastes. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted.

[B]

Yes, it becomes anaphora is kind of hypnotic. I think that's why Churchill was using it with the British people. It's sort of puts you in a bit of a trance that we will fight them on the fields, we fight them on the beaches. But it does it the same thing with that section from the book of Ecclesiastes. There is a time to be born, there's a time to die, there is a time to weep, there is time to rejoice, time to sow. Time to sow, time to reap. And I mean in a sense you could, you could say to done that much quickly by saying there is a time for everything. But I mean this is the great lesson is to don't write just to be efficient and get the meaning across. Write to enchant. And that passage goes on for a lot further than I've just quoted it there. But it has this hypnotic trance like rhythm to it and it produces, it hypnotizes people I think a little bit.

[A]

Well you talk about writing to enchant. That's kind of the opposite of how we're taught to write these Days, Yes.

[B]

Which I think is very, very foolish. We're told to write in the most efficient possible way using the plainest possible words. Shakespeare had been taught to write like that. There would be no Shakespeare. I mean, same goes for Dickens. The same goes for almost anyone. I think writing for efficiency is like dressing for efficiency. You know, if we all dressed for efficiency, we'd just be there in high visibility waterproof trousers. It would be. It would be terrible. Write for beauty. Write to enchant, to make things better than they were. I mean, it depends what you're writing. Of course, if you're just writing a quarterly company report, then you probably want to tone it down a little bit. But if you're writing a novel, if you're writing a script, if you're. Especially if you're writing a poem or, or just writing a, you know, a text to somebody you love. Go. Go for. Go for something bigger and more beautiful and more. You.

[A]

You can.

[B]

You can make this lovely. You don't have to wear the high vis. Waterproof all the time. You can. You can wear silk and Chinese shoes and everything else.

[A]

The.

[B]

I mean, there's. There's nothing else where we are taught to just be as plain as possible. I mean, just look at the room we're in. This isn't the most efficient room possible. If it were, it'd just be plain walls and we'd be sitting on a couple of boxes and. But somebody has tried to design this room to be. To be beautiful. And we do that everywhere we go. We decorate the houses we live in. We buy nice clothes for ourselves. We, you know, we do our hair nicely or people put on jewelry or whatever it happens to be. Why you would take writing, of all things, and say, this must be completely plain. This must never be beautiful. That's crazy.

[A]

Complete. Yeah. It's basically making the world of writing bare in the same way. Like, you see those memes of the guy who has in his apartment just a mattress on the floor and nothing else.

[B]

Yeah, well, exactly. It'd be terrible. Imagine if I invited you around for dinner and then I just gave you, like, a lump of fiber. Here's your carbs, here's some protein. That'll keep you going for another 12 hours. Isn't that not why we cook? We want everything to be beautiful. We want our music to be beautiful. What's the point in music to begin with? But we want our music beautiful. We want our houses beautiful, our rooms beautiful. We want our food to be tasty. We want everything to be beautiful. So why, why break with that on writing?

[A]

Yeah, it reminds me of Soylent.

[B]

Soylent.

[A]

Soylent. It was this drink that was really popular in Silicon Valley like a decade ago. And the whole pitch of the drink, I remember I had this guy who worked next to me and he was like, oh, yeah, I have like 20 soylents a week because that way I don't have to go out to lunch. I can just drink the Soylent while working. And it's great because, you know, look at it here. You get all your protein and all your fiber and all the things you need. You can just drink it. And on one hand, he's completely getting the point of food, which is its sustenance and all that. But even more so, he's completely missing the point because food is so much more than consuming calories for your body. It is this and this and this and this and that. And I think what you're saying here is not all writing needs to be Soylent.

[B]

No, not absolutely. It could be the opposite. I mean, I can see his point of view, but that's to miss out on what it is to be human. Humans eat together and we want our food to be. Be nice. I mean, odd little thing, the word companion in etymology literally means the person you share your bread with. Pan in French is bread Caupan. Yeah. And similarly, even. Even your mate is somebody you share your meat with. So mating with each other, everything is about. Humans are eating creatures. We eat together and we want our food to be delicious. And that's what it means to be human. When you are, when you decide just drink Soylent, you are sort of reducing yourself to being a robot, an inhuman robot. And why do that? And it's the same if you just try and make your writing as bare and bare bones and efficient as possible. That's not what writing is.

[A]

It is funny, because if you were to basically set up, here's a list of the most popular lines of all time, the things that have really stirred souls by the millions and millions. And then you were to say, these are the qualities that they have. And then you were to say, here's what we're teaching in school of how people should write. They're the antithesis of each other.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. It's very weird.

[A]

Now walk me on the other side. When does, using these figures of speech, figures of rhetoric, when do they become baroque and rococo in a way that's kind of eye rolly, like, okay, now you're just trying way too hard.

[B]

It's hard to say because it's a question of judgment. I mean, to keep on the food analogy, it's like how many spices and how many side dishes before it all becomes a bit silly. There. There will be a point. But I think you. I mean, certainly in terms of where. How most people. Right now, you can just throw in a few in a paragraph, and you'll get something so much more than what most people write. It will have spice to it, it will have verve, it will have chilies in it, as it were. You know, there's always going to be a limit where that was too many chilies and now you're ill. But at some point, you know, those first few flakes of chili are always going to be good.

[A]

Mm. You were talking about anaphora earlier on, and we were talking about how it kind of lulls you. It almost puts you in a trance. The other thing is, because I think that you keep saying, okay, I get it, I get it, I get it, I get it. You become very receptive to the thing that comes right after that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's like your defenses have calmed.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Come down or something.

[B]

Yes, Completely down. I mean, that's like I said, as with Winston Churchill, sort of persuading the British to keep fighting in the face of defeat, even if the defeat comes to their own street.

[A]

I don't know how to say this one. Sisus onomaton.

[B]

Yes. Scisis onomaton, which is just not having a main verb, which is one of the things your teacher at school always have told you. A sentence has to have a main verb. No matter what. There must always be a main verb. But that's not true. There's Charles Dickens, the great Victorian novelist. His great novel, Bleak House. The first line, the first sentence of that book is one word long. It's just London, full stop. It's kind of what you need. And then it's exactly the same with Star Trek. It starts space, the final frontier. And we all remember that if you said, this is space, which is the final frontier, then it would never have worked. But dropping the main verb can often be very powerful, as in the Winston Churchill line. It's. I think it's in victory, magnanimity, in defeat, defiance. And it's just that even phrases like, like father, like son, there's no main verb there.

[A]

These feel very bold to me, like a proclamation.

[B]

It's a good one for a first line. It's a good one for a title as well. I mean, for some reason, we never apply this rule of there must be a main verb to the Title of a book like Bleak House or David Copperfield, it's just bang. Here's the. Here's the title. And yeah, it's punchy. Space, the final frontier. It absolutely just. It grabs you.

[A]

It's.

[B]

It's. Yeah, there's something about not having the verb there at all, like banging your. Banging your fist on the table. London. That's what Dickens was writing about. And so he made the first line, London, full stop.

[A]

Listen to me.

[B]

Yes. Famous phrases like lights, camera, action, full stop after each one. But it's a. It's a beautiful pun. Yeah. I mean, it's very, very punchy because it takes out that verb. It just rams. Rams things home.

[A]

Tell me about paradox.

[B]

Paradoxes are. Well, they're funny things. We love a paradox. We love things that don't make sense as human beings. Sort of going back to synesthesia. That's what we like. And we love a good. Something goes back on itself. So, you know, you can make. There's Oscar Wilde, you know, he. Oscar Wilde was the master of the paradox. But the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about is a lovely. And you. You have to think about it for a moment, then you get what he. What he means that he would rather be slandered a little bit than not be known at all. And we have all women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his. Which I think says something rather funny about the notions of difficult mothers in laws and stuff. Although my future mother in law, I should say, is a lovely person. Just because I'm getting married in a few weeks.

[A]

In this world, there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants and the other is getting it.

[B]

Yes, George Bernard Shaw. Which is. Yeah, it's a lovely observation and a lovely way of freezing.

[A]

We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.

[B]

Is that Oscar Wilde again? I think, yes. Well, that sort of goes back to what we were saying about the soil and the. Yes, we need. Unnecessary stuff is absolutely necessary in life. And that's a. But that's just a very pretty and memorable way of saying it. I mean, actually, yes, we were dancing around talking about Soylen and Oscar Wilde kind of put it better than neither of us there. Because, yes, unnecessary things are necessary, but if you can find a way, and it's not an easy one to do, and you shouldn't overuse paradox, but if you can find a way to make a sensible observation sound like it doesn't make sense, then it will really, really stick in the memory.

[A]

Yeah, I was thinking of. That doesn't make sense. Oh, that makes perfect sense. That kind of doesn't make sense. And now I got a puzzle that I need to chew on. Yes, that's what I see happening here.

[B]

Yes. I mean, we love paradox. We love logical paradoxes, even when they're not the beautiful kind here. Things like, I wrote a children's book which was all about logical paradoxes, a children's novel. And because I love those ones, like, what I'm saying now is a lie. Was that statement true or false? Because if it was true, then it was false, and if it was false, then it was true, and if it was true, then it was false. And on and on forever. These ways of making something which you just can't stop thinking about. There is the village barber who shaves all those and only those who cannot shave themselves. Does the village barber shave himself? Yes. Yes. You'll be there forever trying to work it out.

[A]

The Book of John has a lot of these sorts of paradoxes. Before, Abraham was I am.

[B]

Yes. Jesus in the Book of John talks. He loves saying things which don't make sense. Then you have the people that he's talking to don't understand him. He says, that's where Jesus says a man must be born again. And the guy says, how enter second time into his mother's womb? And his Nicodemus says that too. And it's. Yes, but it's the. Jesus is trying to confuse people with these phrases which. Well, for a moment they seem like they don't mean anything. A man must be born again. And then you realize that it obviously has a meaning and it is a truth in a different kind of way. And these days we're so used to the term born again Christian that we forget how weird it was when Jesus first said that.

[A]

How about this one? The Sound of silence?

[B]

Yeah, that's just a great one for the Simon Garfunkel song, which is this strange song about a mystical vision and keeps returning this dream vision he's had about the crowds of people staring at the neon lights and seeing the words of the prophets. But it just keeps coming back to with apostrophe, ending each verse with this phrase, the sounds of silence, which, yes, means nothing or means everything. It's very hard to say. As you say, what is the term? You knew the term. I don't. The Zen thing, the Zen Cohen. Yes. Is that Cohen?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Ah. And that's where you try and think of one hand clapping is that.

[A]

Yes, exactly. It's stuff like that where there's certain things that don't make sense, but then the door closes and then there's certain things that don't make sense, but there's an open there that beckons you to walk through it.

[B]

Yes, you can. I like thinking about the four sided triangle.

[A]

How about the pun paradox? Like labor isn't working.

[B]

Yeah, that's one of the famous pieces of political advertising from the early 1980s in Britain. Pricking. Being ruled by the Labour Party and unemployment was way up. And so the Conservative Party had this slogan for the election campaign or a lot of the adverts was Labour isn't working. So the Labour Party. And there is the pun and the paradox isn't providing jobs for Britain. I mean, you could do sort of like, you could probably reverse it, saying the Conservatives aren't conserving anything or aren't into conservation, making them out of the non eco party. But yes, if you can use the Conservatives aren't conserving. Yeah. There's a line in John Donne as well. So come, madam, come all powers, my rest defy until I labor, I and labor lie. Which means till he's doing a pun there, which is a bit obscure because the labor was a slang term for sexual in the late 16th century. And so he's saying, until I labor, I have sex with you, I in labor lie like a woman in the pains of childbirth, in pains of expectancy.

[A]

Don't it make my brown eyes blue?

[B]

Yeah, that's another beautiful pun one from Crystal Gale. Although she didn't write the song, but yes, the famous Crystal Gale song tend to make my brown eyes blue. And again it's a. For a moment you go, that makes no sense at all. Brown eyes can't be blue. But then of course it's blue in the sense of blue. Sad and lonely being twisted around. Yeah, we've gone from the visual to the emotional. It's a beautiful way of doing it.

[A]

Then you have the first shall be last and the last shall be first. So there. It almost sounds like you got the paradox. But then you also have chiasmus.

[B]

Yes, yeah, absolutely. That's paradox and chiasmus. It's strange how these things mix up. You know, the song the Sounds of Silence is an example of epistrophe because every verse ends with the same words, sounds of silence. And in this one, yes, it's a paradox, but it's also a chiasmus. The same as mankind must put an end to war, War will put an End to mankind. The first shall be last, the last shall be first. And again, it's Jesus saying something reasonably clear when you think about it, which is that those who have a bad life on earth will be rewarded in heaven. And yet he phrases it in this beautiful way, the way paradox of first and last switching over. And also the chiasmus, this symmetrical structure which makes it so, so memorable. We often don't think about. How about the familiar lines? This is one of the funny things, the ones which are so familiar to us. When I was writing Elements of Eloquence, I had to just sort of sit there staring at the ceiling, you know, sitting in the British Library, but staring at the ceiling and trying to think of examples. And often they came to me very late, often after, just after I'd finished writing the chapter and I would suddenly go, oh, wait, give us this day our daily bread. But you never thought to look in the most obvious places, the most well known stuff.

[A]

You're hot, then you're cold.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yes, then no. In, then out. You're up, then you're down. It's wrong, then it's white, it's black, then it's white.

[B]

Yeah. Which is Katy Perry doing the same thing as the book of Ecclesiastes. And there's a time to be born and then time to die, a time to gather up. But he's also doing the same thing as the opening of another Dickens novel. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, was time of reason, it was time of unreason. I can't remember the full thing now, but it's the same as George Gershwin. George Gershwin. You say tomato, I say tomato. You say potato, I say potato.

[A]

Right, now I'm thinking of political speeches. I have a dream. I have a dream. And then you have Obama. Yes, we can.

[B]

Yes, we can.

[A]

Yes, we can.

[B]

Yeah. Except Obama puts the yes, we can on the end. That's the epistrophe. And Martin Luther King puts I have a dream at the beginning of each sentence, which is the anaphora one.

[A]

Right. So basically what you're saying is we swim in the waters of these rhetorical tools.

[B]

They're just everywhere, they're all around us. And we just often sort of don't realize that they're there and they're hanging in our culture, in words, phrases we use all the time.

[A]

What is this idea with paradox of veridical paradoxes?

[B]

Veridical paradox is simply a paradox which turns out to be true, if you see what I mean. As opposed To. I mean, it's usually used in mathematics, actually. There's. There are paradoxes which are insoluble, like this statement is a lie, which goes on and on forever. And then there are other veridical paradoxes, sometimes just used for things which aren't at all obvious, like the Monty hall problem. Do you know the Monty hall problem? Tell me about that. I have three boxes, A, B and C. One of them contains a million dollars. The other two are empty. I know where the million dollars is. I say, pick a box at random, and you pick box A because you have no further information. I say, well, it's a very good thing you didn't pick box C, because that was empty. Now, do you want to change your mind about box A?

[A]

Oh, and now you should change.

[B]

You should change your mind. And it's very, very hard to. Very counterintuitive. But you actually double your chances if you now switch from box A to box B. It took me ages and ages to understand that. I remember. You can understand. The simple way to understand it is if I asked you to guess my birthday. Guess the day of the year.

[A]

December 24th.

[B]

Right. I'll tell you. It's either December 24th or it's April 2nd. And you realize that because your first guess was almost certainly wrong. It's. It's going to be April 2, almost certainly. It's a lot more intuitive on big numbers.

[A]

Tell me about hyperbole.

[B]

Hyperbole is overstatement. And overstatement is just great fun. It's. It's just going far too far for a bit of a laugh. I mean, it's. Sometimes there's a whole genre. In America, you have a whole genre of your mama jokes, I believe. Oh, yo mama jokes. Yeah. Yes. And they're all about how fat your mama's. Yes.

[A]

Or like your mama's so stupid that she stared in an orange juice bottle for 20 minutes just because it said concentrate.

[B]

I like that. Well, it's just going. Going too far and really jumping over everything. And it's my favorite form, actually, is the. It's a sort of twist on hyperbole called adenaton, which is the impossible thing. So the familiar ones are when pigs fly or when hell freezes over, but you can really go to town. There's a Great bit in W.H. auden poem where it goes, I'll love you, dear. I'll love you till China and Africa meet, and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street. I'll love you till the. Our oceans Are folded and hung up to dry and the seven stars go squawking like geese about the sky. The world. Sorry. Years shall run like rabbits. For in my arms I hold the flower of the ages and the first love of the world. And it's just pushing that Impossible things to its absolute conclusion.

[A]

Yeah. There's a band from London called Above and beyond, and they have a line that reminds me of that. I might have even pulled it from that, where they say, I'll love you till the SK falls down.

[B]

Yeah. It's like, what? Yeah. That sort of comes from Mike. Come though, from the old phrase, let justice be done though the heavens fall.

[A]

I was talking to a guy who writes satire, writes really good satire. And I said, what mistake do people make when running satire? He said, they don't go far enough with the bit. It needs to so obviously be a lie. Needs to so obviously be a hyperbole.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Otherwise people are thinking, is that true? Is it not true? So, like, it wouldn't make sense. It wouldn't be as good to say. Man, it was like 100 degrees in there versus.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

It's like a smeltering furnace in there.

[B]

Yes. At the moment, we're. We're in a heat wave in London. At the moment. Outside, I'm melting. I feel like I'm in an air fryer. I feel like I'm in a casserole. I feel like I'm on the surface of the sun.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Gonna have so much fun with this.

[A]

Could have shadowed a drop of saltwater from Golden Gate to Hong Kong without ever losing sight of it.

[B]

Yes. There's a lovely one from Pistachio Hamett, I think. Just describing a really good private detective.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So. Cause it's so impossible he could have shadowed a drop of salt water from Golden Gate to Hong Kong without ever losing sight of it. That's. That's utterly impossible and yet tells you everything you need to know that this is a really good private detective. And does it so much better than just saying, he was a really good private detective. He was very good at shadow. I mean, if you're going to do it, really do it. Yes. Yeah. Because you could have done that. Like, he could have. He could have shadowed a man all the way from San Francisco to New York. And that would be nearly as good as the shadowing. Shadowing a drop of water in the ocean.

[A]

This struck me that grammar is tied to the word glamour. And there's something so revealing about that and why figures of rhetoric are so powerful.

[B]

Well, it goes back to this idea of writing as being magical that you had this secret written, the magical book, the book of. You always need that grammar, glamour, same word pronounced slightly differently because grammar was just something that was written down. And a glamour was a spell that you cast on somebody. You cast a glamour on them and enchant them and then take them off to your magic castle by throwing glamour. And that's where the word glamour comes from. And then we get the word glamorous and glamour meaning just anything beautiful. But it's also the way the reason you have a magic spell is exactly the same thing. The spelling, spelling, grammar, glamour, it's all, it's all the magic, the magic of the written word.

[A]

So would grammar have been like a book of spells, something like that?

[B]

Yes. Well, grammar could just mean a book. Yes. And so, yes, glamour, grammar, same.

[A]

What you're saying is, the idea was that the words, people looked at words of what was in a book as almost something that would just enchant you. Like you would step into it. It was like abracadabra carried away the

[B]

magical power of words. This is why in, in our idea of magic, you have to say the correct words. You have to have the, you know, Harry Potter needs to learn his spells and have the pointers want and say the right word. And you have similar ideas of in. Yeah, I love the scene in a horror film where you, you always have the sort of, the scholar say, there's some ancient writing here. It says, kadogu na krato kwatara. And then obviously everything starts to rumble. Oh no, I've summoned the demon. That's a good example.

[A]

So we were talking about figures of rhetoric and you focused on that and now you've written a new book about poetry. And what is the link between those two?

[B]

There is an awful lot of rhetoric and poetry. And poetry is the most beautiful writing there is. But I think poetry has a problem these days, which I think is it gets ruined in school, it gets ruined in education. People think of a poem just as something you have to write an essay about. And the essay probably has to say something about how the poem doesn't mean what it means appears to mean. And it gets ruined because they're taken out of context and you don't see them as they were meant to be. So, for example, do the twist and shout example. Yeah, the twist and shout. Who knows? Let's imagine a music professor in 200 years time who has perfect pitch and can tell you absolutely every musical thing about the song. Twist and shout. And you Know the flattened ninth in this chord or something like that. Well, think about us and our attitude to Twist and shout. Twist and Shout is the song where when it comes on at a party, you turn it up and everybody, everyone dances. That's what it is. We know Twist and Shout and we know Twist and Shout better than that professor in 200 years will ever know it, because you can analyze something to hell and back. But if you don't know where it belongs in a culture and Twist and shout belongs, being played loud at a party, that's where Twist and shout belongs and how it should be used and how we know to react to it. And if you just. If you took Twist and Shout and then said, write an essay on this by Thursday, at least 500 words it would be. What can you write other than this is the song we play at parties? You don't get a greater appreciation of it by chopping it up. You get a great appreciation by seeing where it was and what it was meant to be doing at the time. Or take another musical analogy. We know what an advertising jingle is, is a very short piece of music that does, you know, this, that or the other. And we know what an advertising jingle is trying to do. It's trying to stick in your mind. Advertising jingles make perfect sense to us and we know that they are different from, you know, a film soundtrack which is, you know, lots of violins playing, trying to make you feel emotional. But the film soundtrack belongs with the film and the advertising jingle belongs on the advert and Twist and Shout belongs in a party. And it's to dance to. And don't try and dance to Eleanorig, because it's impossible. And so I was trying in this book to take us back to where poetry was, where it used to exist properly in society. So I mean, for example, in, in Victorian England, or indeed in Victorian America, if you were invited ground for a dinner party, then after dinner you were expected to have a little turn. You could perform a party piece, something. There was no television after all, there's no entertainment of any sort except the stuff that you can produce. So you might be able to sing a song, play the piano, juggle or recite a poem. And reciting a poem was the very standard way of doing a bit of after dinner entertainment. So if you were, if you wanted to be invited round to places, you were expected to have a poem you could recite. And this should be about five minutes long. Yeah, they got quite long, although you could go shorter, but. And you have to have a new one Every so often, because otherwise it's, oh, God, David's going to do that same one again. And then you would stand up by the half in front of the fire and recite your poem, which will be a sort of dramatic monologue they're called, because it's meant to be exciting. It needs to have something a bit expressive to it. It probably wants to make you look good, depending on my party bit is

[A]

the park bench scene from Good Will Hunting.

[B]

I've never seen Good Will Hunting.

[A]

Oh, this one is good.

[B]

Can you do it?

[A]

I will do it. If I ask you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny. On every art book ever written. Michelangelo. You know a lot about him, right? Him and the Pope. Sexual orientation. The whole works. Right. But I bet you've never stood there and looked up at the Sistine Chapel, smelled that. If I ask you about war, you probably throw Shakespeare at me. Right? Once more into the breach, dear friends. But you've never been near one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap as they gasp their last breath, Mark looking to you for help. If I ask you about love, probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone who could level you with their eyes, who could rescue you from the depths of hell, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. And you don't know about real loss, because that only occurs when you love somebody more than you love yourself. And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much.

[B]

That was brilliant.

[A]

I actually missed a few things. It wasn't completely accurate, but you know what? It was good enough.

[B]

You would make it at a Victorian dinner party. That's what you needed.

[A]

That's my goal in life. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. You'd be able to stand up and do little prophets. The Nadjor King by this still hearth amongst these barren crags matched with an aged wife. Thy meet and dole unequal laws unto a savage race that hoard and sleep and feed and know not me. It's a. And that. That's that.

[A]

Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time. And all these yesterdays have lighted fools

[B]

the way to dusty death.

[A]

Out, out, brief candle.

[B]

Life is but a pulsingshot It.

[A]

Life is but a Life is but a passing shadow, A poor tale that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an

[B]

idiot full of Sound and fury signifying nothing. Yeah. You would absolutely have made it a Victorian dinner party. But that's. Once you see that, you see what Victorian poetry was trying to do, and you don't have to start analyzing it or anything, you just say, this is. This is a situation. It was there for. This is what people wanted and this is what they got. And the same thing goes for. If you're looking at a sonnet from Tudor England. You wrote sonnets to girls to try and get them to have sex with you. Yeah. Or marry you. Or both or. And this was this. They weren't sitting there thinking, oh, you know, when a girl got a sonic, she wasn't thinking, oh, how do I write 400 words about this? This is going to be very difficult. Essay topic. She's thinking, oh, what does it say? Does he love me?

[A]

Wow. He really cares.

[B]

Yeah. But soft.

[A]

What light through yonder window breaks? She was preparing for her exam the next day.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Let's end here. In your new book, Rhyme and Reason, you talk about how well we can go to Chaucer. You talk about da dum, da dum, da dum, da dum. But the advice that you give is to almost mutter what you're reading and snap your fingers or tap to the beat.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So what's going on with that?

[B]

English poetry has a rhythm. The most common one is iambic pentameter, which goes, da dum, da dum, da dum, da dum, da dum. And it's. When you're reading poetry, you should always try and read it aloud, even if it's under your breath, just to try and get that rhythm to go. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May and summer's lease hath all too short date, sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines. This is. This is the rhythm. And it flows through English poetry. People so often get it wrong when they try and put in dramatic pauses in the middle of the line, which really don't belong there because it has this rhythm. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? They want more lovely and more temperate. That's not how to recite it. It has a rhythm and has a rhythm that. That flows. It goes, ta tum, ta tum, ta tum, ta tum, ta tum. And if you just keep that beat going, you know, beat it out with your foot or tap your fingers on the desk or something, and you get something far better. In Zanadud Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree where elf the sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea is the rhythm, the rhythm that flows through. And that's the secret to poetry, is to just to set up that rhythm. Because English words are all stressed in particular ways. They have. David has a stress on the first syllable, not on the second. It's not David, it's David. David, David. Yes, if you, if you're French. And we stress. So also we stress important words more than unimportant words. So a cup of tea is ta tum, ta tum. I really want a lovely cup of tea. Is an iambic pentameter, five tudums in a row. And it's quite easy to get the hang of.

[A]

Poetry is so intimidating in the way that it's talked about. In the way that it's talked about. But what I'm hearing you saying is it's just like music. You enjoy it, you vibe out to it. It's almost. There's an element of it that is anti intellectual or pre intellectual and you just kind of find a way to tap your toe to whatever's being said and you use that as the entry point rather than the.

[B]

That's the entry point. And it's not that complicated. The thing is, people think you have to have like a degree in English in order to understand poetry. But universities have only been teaching degrees in English for the last hundred years. Nobody. Shakespeare wasn't writing for people with degrees in English because degrees in English didn't exist. He was writing for a mass market, an absolutely mass market. Who wanted to hear that beautiful sound. There's a lovely little fact about Shakespeare, the Globe Theatre, which is that Globe theatre could take 3,000 people. Population in London at the time was 200,000 people. So if you scale that up for today, the population of London is about 10 million people. So the equivalent of Globe Theatre would be a 150,000 seater stadium. And Shakespeare had to fill that every day. It was absolutely mass market. Ticket cost, same price as a loaf of bread. You had people from the underclass right up to the top of society going huge, huge business. And they were all there to enjoy Shakespeare and also not understand every word because you can't understand every word of Shakespeare unless you've got the text in front of you, just to let it flow over you. You don't need to understand everything.

[A]

It reminds me of hip hop, right? I like the song. I have no idea what it says. I don't Even know what it means. Even sometimes after knowing the lyrics. But I just like the sound. So I listened to it.

[B]

Yeah. And that's how it worked in the theater. Cause Shakespeare wasn't there to be read. Shakespeare was to be performed. And you can go through it down to a fine bit. But there are bits that nobody could have understood. The people in the cheap seats, there were many. Well, they weren't cheap seats, they were standing at the bottom. They couldn't possibly be understood the classical references, but they loved it anyway. They just absolutely adored the sound it makes. And the thing about theatre is it just keeps going and you will keep understanding what's going on. There's a lovely story I read about the Venetian ambassador to London at the time. Used to love going to the theatre and standing in the really cheap bit, the penny bit. Were down with like the lowest of the low. And the funny thing is he didn't speak English. He just liked to be there hearing this stuff. They. You don't need to understand everything to enjoy it. You don't need to understand every bit of street slang to enjoy hip hop. You don't need. It's often. The mystery is part of the fun.

[A]

The mystery is part of the fun.

[B]

Yes. It's often done quite deliberately as well. Especially in sort of. You get it in sci fi or fantasy. You'll get completely made up stuff where he says, quick, the lithium decoder is about to implode. Go to force Magma 7 or whatever. That doesn't mean anything but it sounds good. And if you like sci fi, that works. So you get the same thing in fantasy when it says this sword was made by the dwarves of England or in the days of King Hatufe. Again, you can't possibly know what it means. You're not meant to know. You're meant to enjoy. Enjoy the hip hop, enjoy the sci fi, enjoy the fantasy, enjoy some Shakespeare. Yeah.

[A]

When I was a kid I didn't like science class because I thought it took away the wonder of reality.

[B]

I can see that.

[A]

I don't want to know how the rainbow works. I just want the rainbow to be all the colors.

[B]

Yeah, I could see that.

[A]

How you think about chapter transitions, you're really, really intentional about them. And what are you thinking about as you edit those?

[B]

I always want to be looking towards the next chapter in the last line. So it becomes. So it becomes a natural flow. And also to leave you wanting, wanting more of it. Actually it's a great thing. When I was writing my children's novel, my children's novel is so much fun because you can really overdo this. It's like as he escaped from the pit of crocodiles, he ran through the door and saw something that really amazed him. End of chapter. And then the child wants to go on but like what happened next? But try and do that. You can't quite do that. The same thing when you're writing non fiction books for grownups. But to try and do the same thing of making that connection. Getting to a little point of saying, which leads us on to what was happening in France. End of chapter and people. Hopefully people will go, oh great, I want to read that next chapter.

[A]

Right?

[B]

I think, I think it's good to think about the way people read. Short chapters, for example, are nice. I've always tried to keep my chapters as short as possible and roughly the same length so that you can say, oh, I'll sit down and read a chapter of my book. And then people go, oh yeah, just 12 pages. And they will read their 12 pages. And then I as an author trying to do two things. A give you the opportunity to stop here because that's the end of the chapter. But also just try and pull you on. Come on, one more chapter before bed. One more chapter. And yeah, try and try and pull people through and give them that option every time like a sort of evil drug dealer. Just trying to. Okay, yeah, this can be your last dose.

[A]

Good to see you, man.

[B]

Really good to see you.