What is the writing principle that suggests that events or characters introduced in threes are more humorous, satisfying, or effective in execution of the story and engaging the reader and is used in a novel featuring Allison Gross, a hideous witch?
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Allison Gross Allison Gross, a hideous witch, tries to bribe the narrator to be her "leman". She combed his hair, first. When a scarlet mantle, a silk shirt with pearls, and a golden cup all fail, she blows on a horn three times, making an oath to make him regret it; then she strikes him with a silver wand, turning him into a wyrm (dragon) bound to a tree. His sister Maisry came to him to comb his hair. One day the Seelie Court came by, and a queen stroked him three times, turning him back into his proper form.
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Rule of three (writing) The rule of three is a writing principle that suggests that events or characters introduced in threes are more humorous, satisfying, or effective in execution of the story and engaging the reader. The reader or audience of this form of text is also thereby more likely to remember the information conveyed. This is because having three entities combines both brevity and rhythm with having the smallest amount of information to create a pattern. It makes the author or speaker appear knowledgeable while being both simple and catchy.
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A Fate Totally Worse than Death A Fate Totally Worse than Death is a spoof horror novel for young adults by Paul Fleischman, published in 1995, in which a badly behaved clique of high school girls get their comeuppance.
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The Bonfire of the Vanities The Bonfire of the Vanities is a 1987 satirical novel by Tom Wolfe. The story is a drama about ambition, racism, social class, politics, and greed in 1980s New York City and centers on three main characters: WASP bond trader Sherman McCoy, Jewish assistant district attorney Larry Kramer, and British expatriate journalist Peter Fallow.
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Squib (writing) A squib is a brief satirical or witty piece of writing or speech, like a lampoon, or a short, sometimes humorous piece in a newspaper or magazine, used as a filler. It can be intended to ignite thinking and discourse by others on topics of theoretical importance—e.g., see MIT Press's journal, "Linguistic Inquiry", but is often less substantial than this and just humorous (see The Daily Squib).
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Trois coups In theatre, les trois coups (the three blows) are hit on the floor of the stage with a stick called "brigadier", just before the start of a performance, in order to attract public attention for the rise of the curtain.
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Bertie Wooster Bertram Wilberforce "Bertie" Wooster is a recurring fictional character in the "Jeeves" novels of British author P. G. Wodehouse. An English gentleman, one of the "idle rich", he appears alongside his valet, Jeeves, whose intelligence manages to save Wooster or one of his friends from numerous awkward situations. As the first-person narrator of ten novels and over 30 short stories, Wooster ranks as one of the most vivid comic creations in popular literature.
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Idiot plot In literary criticism, an idiot plot is "a plot which is kept in motion solely by virtue of the fact that everybody involved is an idiot," and where the story would otherwise be over if this were not the case. It is a narrative where its conflict comes from characters not recognizing, or not being told, key information that would resolve the conflict, often because of plot contrivance. The only thing that prevents the conflict's resolution is the character's constant avoidance or obliviousness of it throughout the plot, even if it was already obvious to the viewer, so the characters are all "idiots" in that they are too obtuse to simply resolve the conflict immediately.
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Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde is a 1997 play written by Moisés Kaufman. It deals with Oscar Wilde's three trials on the matter of his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas and others, which led to charges of "committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons". The play uses real quotes and transcripts of the three trials.
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Daughters of Eve (novel) Daughters of Eve is a 1979 novel by Lois Duncan. Incorporating feminist themes, the novel follows a group of young women who become convinced to punish their fathers by a charismatic teacher.
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Deus ex machina Deus ex machina (] : or ; plural: "dei ex machina") is a Latin calque . The term has evolved to mean a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved by the inspired and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability or object. Its function can be to resolve an otherwise irresolvable plot situation, to surprise the audience, to bring the tale to a happy ending, or act as a comedic device.
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Frankenstein's Aunt Frankenstein's Aunt is the protagonist of three novels - two by Allan Rune Pettersson and a seven-episode TV miniseries based on the first one. The story is a humorous homage to the Universal Horror "Frankenstein" films.
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Evil clown The evil clown is a subversion of the traditional comic clown character, in which the playful trope is instead rendered as disturbing through the use of horror elements and dark humor. The modern archetype of the evil clown was popularized by Stephen King's 1986 novel "It". The character can be seen as playing off the sense of unease felt by sufferers of coulrophobia.
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Comedy of humours The comedy of humours is a genre of dramatic comedy that focuses on a character or range of characters, each of whom exhibits two or more overriding traits or 'humours' that dominates their personality, desires and conduct. This comic technique may be found in Aristophanes, but the English playwrights Ben Jonson and George Chapman popularized the genre in the closing years of the sixteenth century. In the later half of the seventeenth century, it was combined with the comedy of manners in Restoration comedy.
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Circle of Three Circle Of Three is a series of young adult paperback novels by Michael Thomas Ford under the pseudonym Isobel Bird. It follows the lives of three teenage girls from different social cliques, who come together over a mutual interest in witchcraft. It was published between February 5, 2001 and March 19, 2002.
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Clarke's three laws British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke formulated three adages that are known as Clarke's three laws, of which the third law is the best known and most widely cited:
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The Beauty Prize The Beauty Prize is a musical comedy in three acts, with music by Jerome Kern, book and lyrics by George Grossmith and P. G. Wodehouse. It was first produced by Grossmith and J A E Malone on 5 September 1923 at the Winter Garden Theatre, Drury Lane, London. It was designed to replace "The Cabaret Girl", which the same team had produced with great success the previous year, at the same theatre and with predominantly the same cast, but failed to achieve the same success. The review of the first night performance in "The Times" described it as: not ... equal to its select band of predecessors... It has quite an involved plot, which is never very interesting: a vast number of characters, most of whom are never very convincing ... The 'book', by Mr George Grossmith and Mr P G Wodehouse, has many flashes of wit but, on the whole, the narrative is an arid desert in which the music of Mr Jerome Kern makes only an occasional oasis... At the end the piece obtained rather a mixed reception.
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The Worst Witch The Worst Witch is a series of children's books written and illustrated by Jill Murphy. The series are primarily boarding school and fantasy stories, with seven books already published. The first one, "The Worst Witch", was published in 1974 by Allison & Busby, and the most recent one, "The Worst Witch and the Wishing Star", was published in 2013 by Puffin Books, the current publisher of all the series. The books have become some of the most outstandingly successful titles on the Young Puffin paperback list and have sold more than 4 million copies.
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The Romance of the Forest The Romance of the Forest is a Gothic novel by Ann Radcliffe that was first published in 1791. It combines an air of mystery and suspense with an examination of the tension between hedonism and morality. The novel was her first major, popular success, going through four editions in its first three years. Furthermore, "this novel also established her reputation as the first among her era's writers of romance. There is surprisingly little essential difference in characterization, Gothic décor, or plot outline to distinguish this novel from its predecessors. Its superior merit lies in the expansive and subtle use which the author makes of these elements so that the characters are relatively well realized, the Gothic décor is blended into the sensibility of the reader rather than imposed upon it, and the plot is an intricate and often dramatic series of congruent incidents and living tableaux, not a congeries of barely related and stillborn scenes and surprises.” Most critics who have given any attention to Mrs. Radcliffe as a novelist have decided that she is important chiefly for her use of the supernatural, and for her emphasis upon landscape. Her use of the supernatural and emphasis upon landscape can clearly be seen throughout this novel. We see the aforementioned when confronted with the principal character in the novel, Adeline. She is a "highly-interesting character, whom the writer conducts through a series of alarming situations, and hair-breadth escapes, in which she has skillfully contrived to hold the reader’s curiosity continually in suspense, and at the same time to keep their feelings in a state of perpetual agitation.”
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Gerald's Party Gerald's Party is the fourth full-length novel written by Robert Coover, published in 1986. The book encompasses a single night at a party given by the title character and narrator, Gerald. Though the murder of a beautiful actress is central to the plot, Coover's text has little in common with a traditional murder mystery. He appears to be approaching the murder mystery genre with the goal of subverting/exhausting its possibilities. A comparable strategy can be seen in his retellings of fairy tales (see Briar Rose, Pricksongs), and his reframing of movie conventions (Ghost Town, A Night at the Movies). Like Coover's other later works, this is experimental fiction. The text regularly returns to themes of sex, violence, and a blurred boundary between theatre and reality.
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Bleak House Bleak House is the ninth novel by English author Charles Dickens, first published as a serial between March 1852 and September 1853. The novel has many characters and several sub-plots, and the story is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of "Bleak House" is a long-running legal case, "Jarndyce and Jarndyce", which came about because someone wrote several conflicting wills. Dickens uses this case to satirise the English judicial system. Though the legal profession criticised Dickens's satire as exaggerated, this novel helped support a judicial reform movement, which culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870s.
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The Carnivorous Carnival The Carnivorous Carnival is the ninth novel in the children's novel series "A Series of Unfortunate Events" by Lemony Snicket.