Use poetry techniques to enhance your fiction? But you're no
poet, you say. Neither am I. My poetry starts and ends at a few
poorly done limericks. However, many of the practices used by
accomplished poets can be employed to strengthen prose.
For examples, look at children's books, especially those aimed
at younger readers and those that have endured over the years.
Chances are you'll find the author used some of the elements of
poetry. The incomparable Dr. Seuss made liberal use of rhyme,
rhythm, alliteration to bring his stories to life.
Within a severely limited space, poets have to make every word count.
Following are but a few of the poetry techniques writers can use to strengthen their stories:
Alliteration
This is the repetition of initial sounds.
Consider the following example:
Maddie and Mitchell Moose made meat and mince pies.
If I had written, "Maddie and Sam Bear cooked beef and
vegetable pies," we would have the same meaning, but the movement
and the flow of the sentence are lost. As reading is an auditory
as well as a visual experience, the repetition of the letter m
appeals to the ear as well as the eye.
Remember that children love to have their funny bones tickled.
(And so do most of us older children.) Alliteration can add humor
and/or emphasis when used correctly.
Backloading
Put the most important word of a sentence or a paragraph at the end.
Let's take a teenage girl who is getting ready to go to the
prom and notices a huge blemish on her forehead:
Renee stepped into her fairy tale of a dress. She looked at
herself in the mirror and screamed.
Turn the second sentence around and we have: She screamed as
she looked at herself in the mirror.
Again, the content remains the same, but the emphasis on the
most important word, screamed, is lost.
Rhythm
Count the syllables and the words in your sentences. See what
effect it has when you vary them.
Short, choppy sentences work best with fast-paced action.
Longer, more involved sentences, will slow the action down.
Let's take the story of a young boy who desperately wants to
impress his athletic father at the last ball game of the season:
My bat whacked the ball. I ran to first base. Then second.
Third. I slid into home. My first home run. Ever. I looked to
my dad. He was grinning.
The short sentences, the longest only five words long, give an
immediacy to the action.
Contrast that with the following passage from a story of a
twelve-year-old girl who has returned to her grandmother's farm
after a six year absence to attend her grandmother's funeral:
The summer green of the fields took me back to the first time
I had visited my grandmother's farm when I was only six years old.
My mother had died that year, and my world had turned upside down.
Grandma had folded me into her arms, just as the farm had folded me
into the warm embrace with the pungent smells of the animals, the
texture of the rich, dark earth, the quiet of the evenings. And I
began to heal.
The long, flowing sentences give a dreamy quality to the
passage, taking us, the readers, into the past.
Anaphora
Repeating words or phrases to emphasize them.
Take the story of a young teenage girl whose little brother
has died after long weeks in the hospital:
I remember Jeremy before he died. I remember how he looked at
me from the hospital bed with his soft blue eyes. I remember how
I wanted to touch him but couldn't because of the tubes poking
every part of his body.
I could have written:
I remember seeing Jeremy before he died. He had looked at me
from the hospital bed with his soft blue eyes. I wanted to touch
him but couldn't because of the tubes poking every part of his
body.
The words are nearly the same. The meaning is essentially the
same, but something is lost. The words no longer have the movement
of the first version. Notice, too, the power of three. I used
three sentences to bring .
Try these techniques, and others, on your own. Play with
different ones until you achieve the result you want. See what
works in your story, then sit back and reap the compliments from
editors, and, more importantly, delighted children.
