T: Technique worth stealing

Studying poetry will make you a better writer, no matter what genre you aspire to master. Poetry uses a number of techniques that I believe are quite transferable to other kinds of writing.

Today, I'd like to share a technique to "steal" from poets--using the sound device assonance (repeated vowel sounds) to ramp up the emotion in your fiction. The thinking behind sound devices is often onomatopoetic; the sound and meaning are linked.

morguefile.com

Consider these examples. Say them aloud. How do they make you feel?

1. John groped for his coat in hopes the Tylenol bottle hadn’t dropped through the hole in his pocket.

2. Lisa worried they'd think her rude if she cooed at their cute baby, so she chewed her lip while brooding on his tiny blue shoes.

3. Wading deeper into the creek, Ross felt the coldness seep through his sneakers. Shining eyes seemed to peek through the reeds. A cheeping frog sent a shriek of fear streaking up his spine, but he ground his teeth. Must stay silent. Must not be weak.


In my first example, Can you feel John's inner ache? The repeated oh, oh, aah, ahh,make the passage seem to moan and groan on the page. The repeated O sounds (both short and long) make you verbalize John's pain response.

In my second example, Lisa's entire inner monologue does coo at the cute baby, even if she refuses to do it aloud. The repeated long U sound carries it. This is an excellent, subtle way to add layers of meaning to your character's thoughts. Characters might consciously deny something while the sounds in their words convey a deeper, hidden, unconscious desire for the denied thing.

In my third example, the creepy feeling is reinforced by a series of little shrieks, like one might hear upon having a bug scurry over bare skin: Eeek! Ross is screaming inside, even if he's being tough and silent on the outside.

Your turn:
Chose an emotion you want to convey and think of the most primal sound you associate with it, such as Os for groaning with pain, Es for screaming with fright. Write a sentence, paragraph or scene in which you repeat the sounds.

Hint: a rhyming dictionary will help you identify words with the vowel sounds you need.

How might you use this technique today to improve your writing?

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R: Reflections

By Deborah Guzzi

Photo credit: Gracey at morguefile.com

randomly I stare into
each reflective surface
forever pondering the
lines of age, pain and joy
each one a splendid testament
culled from a full life
teased endlessly, eternally
into distorted images
of the soul of me
never quite
seeing...I

surely, I am
not this shallow
only time can plane my cheek
insight my eyes to fade
turn the plumpness of lip to
crinkles of mirth
enlivening the gray
languishing in silver
forever seeing but parts of the
ecstasy I
reflect

Source: poetrysoup.com

You might have observed, through my use of color, that the first letter of each line, when read downwards, forms a word. This is a poetic form called an acrostic, and was used frequently in ancient poetry like the Hebrew book of Psalms. What is particularly clever about this piece is that the poet recreates the word backwards (or in mirror image) in the second stanza, reinforcing the sense of reflections.

Acrostics are a somewhat slighted form, in part because it's often one of the first forays into poetry writing for early elementary students. But as Guzzi shows, the form can be quite sophisticated in the hands of an experienced poet. Even within the confines of form, she has some striking sound patterns, like "culled from a full life" and "plumpness of lip."

What lines or images strike you?

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Turning a Short Story into Verse

by Jessica Bell

The first word of advice I was given about writing stories in verse was that you can’t just break a short story into lines and call it “verse.”

This is true.

It’s also not.

Because ultimately, that’s what I did with Muted.

Muted was a normal short story to begin with. It was first published in an anthology called From Stage Door Shadows. But I wanted to publish it as a stand-alone piece, too. Mainly because I loved the story and thought it deserved a piece of the limelight.

I did want it to be a little more innovative though, as I’m the type of writer who likes to push boundaries and not conform. The story itself is quite unique, so I wanted to highlight this by making the format unique too. Also, the subject matter is horrific. And I didn’t want it to just be “a horrific story.” I wanted it to be beautiful, too. So turning it into verse created a great juxtaposition.

By writing Muted in verse, I was able to accent the emotion via clever line breaks, a bit of internal rhyme, alliteration, onomatopoeia and unusual formatting. Things that would normally bog a traditional short story down, if done in excess. But in verse? It works. And I believe gives the story an even stronger emotional pull.

But I didn’t just insert line breaks into the prose. After doing this, I had to reevaluate the story as a whole new piece of work. I tweaked a lot of lines to create double meanings in the line breaks, added new elements to the story, amped up the emotion with the poetic devices I mentioned above, and made sure the rhythm of each line flowed naturally, steadily, and rolled off the tongue.

Have you ever written a short story in verse? How did you go about it?

About Muted

What if it were illegal to wear clothes?

What if it were the law to wear a temperature-controlled body suit made of fetus membrane ... every day?

What if you were a singer, and it was illegal to sing?

What if you sang anyway, and got detained by a LEO, and punished by having your vocal chords violently slashed, and eardrums perforated?

What if multiple offenders were killed for their skin?

Would you commit suicide? Drown yourself in the river?

Concetta would.

But something stops her in her tracks ...

Purchase muted: a short story in verse
Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon Ca 

About Jessica

The Australian-native contemporary fiction author and poet, Jessica Bell, also makes a living as an editor and writer for global ELT publishers (English Language Teaching), such as Pearson Education, HarperCollins, Macmillan Education, Education First and Cengage Learning.

She is the co-publishing editor of Vine Leaves Literary Journal, and the director of the Homeric Writers’ Retreat & Workshop on the Greek island of Ithaca.

Connect with Jessica online:
website | retreat & workshop | blog | Vine Leaves Journal | Facebook | Twitter

CLICK HERE  to subscribe to Jessica’s newsletter. Every subscriber will receive The Hum of Sin Against Skin for free, and be the first to know about new releases and special subscriber giveaways.

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Stolen from poets: "Make it new"

"Make it new" declared Ezra Pound (1885-1972), a statement that became a rallying cry to the generation of early 20th century writers  we now call the Modernists. Nearly 100 years later, we still love a few of their favorite poetics tools to make writing fresh and zingy: neologism and portmanteau.

Don't be alarmed by the highfalutin' names. These two techniques are about breaking the rules. When you can't find the perfect word, you make one up. What could be more fun than that?

Neologism, from the Greek roots neo/new and logos/word, means an invented word. Lewis Carroll popularized the practice with his poem "Jabberwocky" in which he coined a number of terms, from galumphing to slithy. James Joyce's Finnegans Wake contains hundreds, including nebuless,  goddinpotty,bisaacles.

Neologisms can be especially helpful for conveying the thoughts of someone a bit different from the average thinker. In Daniel Keyes's Flowers for Algernon, Charlie's intelligence level is shown to be lacking through his use of not-quite-right terms including rilax, compushishens, telld. It's considerably more effective than simply telling us through a third-person narrator that Charlie has mental retardation.

I'm a fan of using neologisms for sound effect purposes--onomatopoeic neologism, for those of you who like fancy terminology. In my novel Never Gone, footsteps across icy snow "sloosh nearer." Later in the scene, simple, unadorned sound heightens the spookiness of the moment: "Chush. Chush. Chush."  

photo by mzacha, morguefile.com

Portmanteau, or pieced-together words, gets its name from a piece of luggage with two sides that's hinged in the middle. Lewis Carroll was the coiner of this use of the word.

Shakespeare was the king of portmanteau, inventing new words such as madcap and lackluster. Loads of writers since then have been coining these "siamixed" kinds of words (to steal from Joyce): Sylvia Plath gave us "a Meinkampf look" (making an adjective of Hitler's book Mein Kampf); George Orwell gave us "newspeak."

Portmanteau is probably the very best tool for naming some future technology so that it will still be understandable to contemporary readers. In Dune, Frank Herbert called his flying machines "ornithopters," combining the Greek words for bird and wing, giving readers a picture of  how the machines might look in flight.

Our culture has really run with this poetic tool, coining new terms at an unprecedented rate. We are all quick to take up terms like "Frankenfood," "netiquitte," "frappuccino" because they are readily understood and define well the qualities of some new phenomenon.

Portmanteau can also be wonderfully playful, a great way to pump up character voice. You get a very strong sense of someone who finds the new guy "adorkable" or who becomes "aggrannoyed" about the long line at the supermarket.

Your turn:
How might you incorporate some coined terms to jazz up your writing?

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Verse averse? Why you should try poetry

I'm over at Tyrean Martinson's blog today, explaining why fiction writers should include poetry reading in their craft-building self-education, in a post titled "Why read poetry?".

Poets have plenty to teach you about how to use words powerfully, how to employ sound and rhythm to undergird the action and emotion in your work, and how to conquer wordiness. You might be surprised to know that even genre-based magazines--romance, fantasty, SciFi, horror--often publish poems. So if form scares you off, perhaps content will make the prospect a bit more enticing.

I hope to speak more specifically about some of these things in an ongoing series "Stolen from Poets." My first post, on using vowel power to ramp up emotion, is HERE.

Are you verse averse? How might you overcome it?

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Stolen from poets: ramp up emotion with vowel power

I've asserted in previous posts that studying poetry will make you a better writer, no matter what genre you aspire to master. Poetry uses a number of techniques that I believe are quite transferable to other kinds of writing.

Today, I'll begin a short series called "Stolen from poets" that explores some of those techniques and how to use them in your own writing. I'll try to keep these brief and focused, tackling one technique at a time.

Sound devices, part 1: Assonance

The thinking behind sound devices is often onomatopoetic; the sound and meaning are linked.Today I'd like to focus specifically on assonance--repeated vowel sounds--and how they can carry emotions.

morguefile.com

Consider these examples. Say them aloud. How do they make you feel?

1. John groped for his coat in hopes the Tylenol bottle hadn’t dropped through the hole in his pocket.

2. Lisa worried they'd think her rude if she cooed at their cute baby, so she chewed her lip while brooding on his tiny blue shoes.

3. Wading deeper into the creek, Ross felt the coldness seep through his sneakers. Shining eyes seemed to peek through the reeds. A cheeping frog sent a shriek of fear streaking up his spine, but he ground his teeth. Must stay silent. Must not be weak.


In my first example, Can you feel John's inner ache? The repeated oh, oh, aah, ahh,make the passage seem to moan and groan on the page. The repeated O sounds (both short and long) make you verbalize John's pain response.

In my second example, Lisa's entire inner monologue does coo at the cute baby, even if she refuses to do it aloud. The repeated long U sound carries it. This is an excellent, subtle way to add layers of meaning to your character's thoughts. Characters might consciously deny something while the sounds in their words convey a deeper, hidden, unconscious desire for the denied thing.

In my third example, the creepy feeling is reinforced by a series of little shrieks, like one might hear upon having a bug scurry over bare skin: Eeek! Ross is screaming inside, even if he's being tough and silent on the outside.

Your turn:
Chose an emotion you want to convey and think of the most primal sound you associate with it, such as Os for groaning with pain, Es for screaming with fright. Write a sentence, paragraph or scene in which you repeat the sounds.

Hint: a rhyming dictionary will help you identify words with the vowel sounds you need.

How might you use this technique today to improve your writing?

Read More

Tips for getting started in poetry

April is National Poetry Month, and to celebrate, I'm scattering poetry love among my fellow bloggers. 

Photo by d3designs, morguefile.com

Today I'm over at Connie Keller's blog "A Merry Heart," with tips for beginner poets, "Make Words Your Playground." 

Many writers fear poetry based on misperceptions: it is old-fashioned and frivolous, or else it's much, much, much too hard to read or write.

 Honestly, most poetry is not highbrow and esoteric; it can be very FUN to write. Yes, it's more condensed than prose, but who needs a PhD to trim things? And no matter what genre you most often write in, you want your work to stir your reader's imagination and give them a sensory experience. Learning some techniques used in poetry can help you do just that. I guarantee your prose will get stronger from experimenting with poetry.

If you're trying to build a publication history, it's often easier to break in with poetry. Literary journals typically publish three to four times as many poems as short stories per issue, simply because they take up less space.

Do you have fears about writing poetry? Would you like to learn more about poetry techniques and how to use them in prose?

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Make your stories sing

Music has been a big piece of my life for as long as I can remember. My sibs and I all took piano lessons. There were school choirs, the radio, and as anyone raised in the Christian tradition, sacred music making up the soundtrack of my days.

Lyric has a way of working into your consciousness, thrumming in your brain. It most naturally expresses itself in poetry. But lyrical writing can appear in any kind of writing, from nonfiction essays and memoir to the most hard-boiled fiction. Noir has its own musicality. So do thrillers and horror.

Today I'm over at Talespinning, talking about making your stories sing: the benefits of poetry training for novelists. Swing on by for some tips on using poetic devices in your work to give it texture.

Tomorrow, I'll have a special guest, author Connie Keller, here to talk about how having face blindness has in fact helped her build strong characterization. Can't wait for you to hear her story. It's fascinating!

Giveaway

Deniz Bevan at The Girdle of Melian is hosting an ebook giveaway of Never Gone. She's also talking about Daleks. Who could resist? Go forth and enter for a chance to win "a delightful page-turner full of sorrow, mystery and redemption."

Does your fiction have a soundtrack? Is it palpable in your story itself? 

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