Alliteration Examples

Learn to Use Alliteration Through Examples

Unlike poets, fiction writers rarely discuss the uses of alliteration and how it can be used consciously to create more powerful fiction. In his lecture, "The Sentence Is a Lonely Place," Gary Lutz urges writers, "Avail yourself of alliteration . . . Such repetition can be soothing, and stabilizing, especially in a sentence whose content and emotional gusts are anything but." He provides an example from Don DeLillo featuring h's: "He was here in the howl of the world," and from Christine Schutt: "He knew the kind of Kleenex crud a crying girl left behind."

But alliteration can also play a less subtle role. In Moby Dick, Melville uses alliteration to build character and to help the reader experience the scene on board a whaling ship. The character, Stubb, for instance, is described as having "rather a peculiar way of talking to them in general," and as saying "the most terrific things to his crew." Melville uses alliteration to help illustrates these claims. "The devil fetch ye, ye ragamuffin rapscallions," Stubb says. "Start her -- start her, my silver spoons! Start her, marling spikes!" (In this last quote, we have not only alliteration in the repetition of the S sounds, but also an example of assonance in the words "start" and "marling.")

See an example of how Melville uses alliteration for suspense and drama. Or study an example of alliteration from a very different kind of author, Donald Westlake.

While you may use assonance in more poetic moments of your prose without even being conscious of it, alliteration, as in the example of the "beautiful blonde bludgeoned" from the Donald Westlake example linked to above, tends to call attention to itself. Unless you intend for this to happen -- to build character or drama, or to create a comic moment -- employ alliteration selectively.

See examples of assonance.