Knowing your similes from your sibilance is crucial. In this lesson we'll learn about techniques and devices you can use.

Key points: The main thing to remember is that you don’t need to have a tick list of techniques to use. Okay, so you might be desperate to write about alliteration – but if there isn’t any, you’re stuck. You need to show you understand techniques and devices but you won’t get marks for just identifying one. It’s about why they are used, and what effects they have.

When you are looking at a text, whether it is fiction or non-fiction, it is important to consider what a writer has done to make you think in a certain way about a text. For example:

• Have they used a rhetorical question to start off?
• Perhaps there is a triplet, or power/rule of three?
• Maybe there is a series of emotive words being used to impact on you?

The main idea here is to think about why something is being used and how it impacts on you.