Another Alliteration Bug

[Incanus]

Again the alliteration affliction arises! Each and every episode effectively endangers my endeavors. Indeed, I insist I am innocent of the initial ironic instance. Why won't it wane when I want it to?

Please help this hapless hermit through this horrific happenstance--

 

[Caged Maiden]

Boy, you got bit bad by the bug...

couldn't help myself.

Okay, so I really like alliteration. What's the problem with it? Is it annoying? I'm not sure. I think it could become tedious if overused, but I think it's a fun way to use words sometimes.

 

[Incanus]

**Just being silly. Literary humor. Alliteration is awesome in its place, but imagine being stuck with it, cursed with it--everything you say alliterates. My sense of humor can be... questionable, at best**

Could there be a corresponding curative for this not-so-common, cruel condition?

 

[Caged Maiden]

Um...your good friend could punch you in the face whenever you suffer from the alliteration bug...and pretty soon you'd be conditioned against it? Guess it depends on how big a problem one has, I suppose. HA! I like your humor.

You know, in one of my query letters, I have "...was kidnapped by a murderous madman and his mercenaries..." and I like it, but I worry that agents will think I'm being cute or clever, and I don't want to give that impression. I like the words despite them beginning with "m". Those were the words I chose because they correctly convey my meaning, but it does sort of look like I'm being deliberate...

 

[Heliotrope]

I've heard having a helper horrify you, such as with hiccups, has historically been a handy healing method.

 

[Heliotrope]

There is a wonderful kids book by Margaret Atwood called

Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut

This is how it starts:

Princess Prunella lived in a pink palace with her pinheaded parents, Princess Patty and Prince Peter, her three plump pussycats, Patience, Prue and Pringle, and per puppy dog, Pug.

Princess Prunella was proud, prissy, and pretty, and unhappily very spoiled. She would never pick up her playthings, plump her pillows, or put away her pens, pencils and puzzles. Instead, after her breakfast of prunes and porridge, and her pineapple and passionfruit punch, presented in a copper cup painted with porpoises and spiders, she would parade around all day, in puffy petticoats sprinkled with sparkling pink sequins, a peculiar pill polo-necked pullover, a pair of pale purple pumps with peonies on the insteps, and a pinafore printed with pansies and petunias, slurping peppermints and peering at her dimples in a pocket mirror….

So obviously Margaret Atwood gets it too

 

[Incanus]

True terror as treatment—terrific! But where to procure a person of this particularly peculiar persuasion? Fast, before I falter further, forever foregoing finesse!

**CM--that is basically how I ended up with this... intermittent illness. I would look back over something I had just written and realize it was chock full of unintended alliteration. I would think to myself--"Now how does that happen? This should only occur when I want it to." After this happened a dozen times it made me start to wonder...**

 

[Incanus]

So obviously Margaret Atwood gets it too

Then I'm in good company! Wow, that's really something. Does she keep it up the whole time? All P's? How long is the book?

 

[Velka]

Mayhaps a meandering march amidst marigolds in a meadow may mitigate your merciless musings on this madness?

 

[NerdyCavegirl]

Sometimes I have a similar problem, but iambic pentameter instead.