Balance and Power

Win our February writing contest

The sound your’re hearing in that Oscar Wilde quote is called balance. Also known as parallelism, balance works because of the rub between similarity and difference.

Balance draws reader attention to the most important parts of your message, with passages like:

“… my head in the rainclouds, my heart in the sky.”
— Donna Tartt, novelist, in The Goldfinch

“Nefertiti is a face without a queen; Cleopatra is a queen without a face.”
— Stacy Schiff, author, in Cleopatra: A Life

“Every drug … is a poison in disguise … every poison may be a drug in disguise.”
— Siddhartha Mukherjee, author and oncologist, in the Emperor of All Maladies

For this month’s writing contest, we’re inviting you to show us how it’s done. Here’s how to enter:

1. Please read this post.
2. Share your best example of parallelism by Feb. 28, 2015.

The person who submits the best entry will win a wordplay-themed gift from me.

Happy writing!