Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/28367
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

When I was first starting out with poetry (and indeed, even to a certain extent today), I liked to begin with structure/meter, choosing a simple, regular structure and improvising an almost non-sensical set of words which had a good ring to them.

Next, I continued to practice, this time fitting rhymes at the end of my lines. I started with rhyming couplets, moving to longer rhyming stanzas. Now I had somewhat surreal rhyming lines set to a pleasing meter with a good ring to them.

After that - editing, editing, editing. Tweaking the poem rhyme by rhyme, line by line, phrase by phrase, slowly knocking more and more meaning into the lines - cutting everything I couldn't make work and continuously introducing new lines, and new rhymes, until I had a poem which actually came together. After that, keep reading through it, top to bottom, knocking out the dents and areas where it jars or doesn't properly flow.

Finally - you need to be extremely tough on cutting line out lines which just aren't working. If you have three amazing, perfect, flawless lines, but cannot for the life of you find a fourth line to fit, those three lines have to be cut or drastically reworked. Back to the drawing board, time to try again.

Addendum. Keep reading! You can never read enough and if you want to write good poetry, read good (and indeed, bad) poetry.

I cannot ever get enough of listening to musicals. I love them so much - listening to them over and over and over again, then improvising my own words on the end, jotting them down as I sing (or voice recording myself for transcription later), then editing, editing editing until I have the song I want, and swapping out the music.

I appreciate this question is old but maybe this will help someone.

Original score: 0