Stephen White, the NYT bestselling author of 16 Alan Gregory novels, writes like he’s an expert on understanding nonverbal communication and emotion. He is. He’s a psychologist.
There’s no better place to find stellar examples of empowering emotion and nonverbal communication than from a psychologist who writes about a psychologist. His protagonist, Alan Gregory, is as intuitive about interpreting nonverbals as the author who created him.
Enjoy these examples from Stephen White’s recent release, DEAD TIME: Cliché Twist, Epistrophe, Simile, Paralanguage Simile, Eye Message, and a Visceral Response.
P. 141 Cliché Twist: Where sexual indiscretion was concerned, Sam felt he was the blackest pot on the earth, and he was not about to disparage anyone else’s charred kettle.
P. 93 Epistrophe: “Because you’ll see something I won’t see. You’ll see something her sister won’t see. You may well see something the cop won’t see.”
P. 113 Simile: Bad habits with my ex-wife kept surfacing like a beach ball I was trying to hold underwater.
P. 156 Paralanguage Simile: “Listen,” he said in a voice that cut off the small talk the way a sharp knife takes the top off a banana. “I need a favor. A big . . .favor.”
P. 186 Eyes: Hector’s eyes locked on mine and restrained me like a pair of handcuffs.
P. 342 Visceral Response: Another chill skittered across the wide flesh on my back. It felt like a terrified cluster of semi-frozen bugs running for their lives.
Fresh writing! I’ll dig deeper into the visceral example. Stephen White could have written:
A chill skittered across my back.
We’ve read that line, or variations, hundreds of times. Stephen wrote his line fresh. He amplified, specified, threw in a terrified cluster of semi-frozen bugs – and had fun writing that line. I’m betting the readers have fun reading it too.
In DEAD TIME, Stephen White adds power with a variety of rhetorical devices including anaphora, epistrophe, similes, metaphors and litotes. Those are five of the twenty-five rhetorical devices I cover in Deep Editing: The EDITS System, Rhetorical Devices, and More. That on-line course is offered in May through Writer University.
Stephen White’s books are stellar reads. His placement on the New York Times bestseller list, well-deserved.
