Creative Writing Vocabulary: Prose vs. Poetry

This is a handy, if simplistic distinction between poetry and prose. Even if you don't consider yourself a poet, you should still consider learning poetic techniques for use in prose. I think I've mentioned before that a good knowledge of poetry and poetic devices can spice up your prose. If nothing else, it's a great creative writing exercise to try to write the different poetic forms.

Prose vs. Poetry
by: Terry J. Coyier

Prose - a simple word that confuses so many people. What is it exactly? According to dictionary.com:

1.the ordinary form of spoken or written language, without metrical structure, as distinguished from poetry or verse.

2.matter-of-fact, commonplace, or dull expression, quality, discourse, etc.

Prose encompasses most of the writing and speaking we engage in today, including what I am writing here. It is everything from novels to blog entries to television/films and everything in between. Prose is simply a fancy literary term used to separate general writing from poetry or verse. (Though, just to confuse you, we do have prose poetry, the halibun and free verse which can muddy any clear distinction.) Prose is typically written in plain language, follows the standard rules of grammar and punctuation and is arranged in paragraphs. It often reflects ordinary speech patterns. In fiction, writers do develop different styles of writing and employ various techniques to add interest for readers, but the writing is still considered prose.

Now that you understand a little about prose, let’s discuss poetry. Most people recognize poetry if they see a traditional poem. For instance, writing that has lines similar in length (each starting with a capital letter, of course), is arranged in stanzas, and has rhyme at the end of the lines. Most of us were taught about this type of poetry around the third or fourth grade. But poetry is so much more complex and varied than that simple example. In fact, those few things don’t necessarily define poetry at all.

Poetry is much more than just a few basics such as the form in which it is written, some general meter and rhyme. Modern poetry often deviates from traditional poetic form and rules. Poetry presentation has, once again, become somewhat artistic for some poets who write in everything from couplets to verse paragraphs. These lines can also be arranged on a page to enhance the visual appeal of the poem (as in shape poems), to aid in the rhythm of the poem (adding space between words to create longer pauses while reading aloud, for instance) or to add to the meaning or irony of a poem by causing words to appear in specific places. Standard punctuation and capitalization practices are falling by the wayside, as well, for many contemporary poets.

This still has little to do with poetry itself. So, how do we define poetry? I think Iowan, Paul Engle, had the right idea with is explanation: “Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.” That, to me, is what poetry is, but I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t break it down somewhat. I am not providing definitions, they are easy enough to come by.

Basic Poetic Devices

Diction
Meter
Caesura
Enjambment
Rhyme
Repetition
Alliteration
Assonance
Consonance
Onomatopoeia
Personification
Irony
Imagery
Symbol
Metonymy
Simile
Hyperbole
Metaphor
Oxymoron

A quick internet search will provide you with reading material on each of these devices. Some are easier to hone than others, but all are useful if you wish to write interesting poetry verses writing simple poems.

Hopefully the lines between prose and poetry are now a bit clearer than before. Sometime in the future, I will have to address those other pesky fellows I mentioned that muddy the waters between the two. For now, whether you chose to write prose or poetry or both, I wish you the utmost success.

About The Author

Terry J. Coyier is a 37-year-old college student studying for an Associates of Applied Sciences degree. She is also a freelance writer who writes about a variety of topics. She lives with her son in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex. Terry is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/ which is a site for Writers.

The Devil Is in the Details: Too Much Detail in Your Writing?

Detail is good, but when is it too much? Here's an answer by Vivian Gilbert Zabel.

Too Much Detail Stops the Flow
By Vivian Gilbert Zabel

Writing a good story requires the author have enough detail that the reader knows who, what, when, where, why, and how without over-loading with unneeded information. A novel can contain more detail than a short story, but paragraphs filled with exposition loses the reader’s attention. For example, read the following paragraph:

The angry man strode toward the French doors. The tall windows reflected the fire burning in the fireplace. The antique furniture shone with a high gloss. Candles provided the only light other than that of the fire. A glass of liquid sat beside a cut glass container on a small table in front of one sofa. A Persian rug covered high gloss wood floors.

The above paragraph describes a lovely room, doesn't it? What it doesn't do is move the story along. Unless all those details are needed for plot, then they don't belong in a story. Any that are needed should be woven into the story in such a way that the flow of the story isn't disrupted.

The angry man strode toward the French windows. His anger blinded him, but even if he wanted to see outside, the windows reflected only the fire burning in the fireplace.

"What were you thinking?" He whirled to face the woman who sipped from a glass before placing it on the table.

Two of the details are included into the action, giving enough detail to help the reader "see" what happens without de-railing the plot. As the story progresses, more of the details, if needed or wanted, can be included as part of the action or storyline.

Sometimes I've received reviews wanting to know more details than given or needed in the story. Short means just that, short. Everything cannot be included that would be found in a novel. An author needs to know what to include and what to eliminate to make the story alive and moving. Readers need to realize that wanting to know more about the characters doesn't mean that more information is needed, but that the writer did a good job of making the characters believable and interesting.

In a novel, when too much information in included at one time, those details that don’t “move the plot” forward, reader will skip those paragraphs to find where the story line continues. Just because one writes a book doesn’t mean that every single detail be included.

Therefore, we need enough detail to give readers a sense of where the action or story is taking place, but we shouldn’t include so much that the flow of the story is disrupted.

Vivian Gilbert Zabel taught writing for twenty-five years, honing her skills as she studied and taught. An author on Writers (http://www.Writing.Com/ ), her portfolio can be found at http://www.Writing.Com/authors/vzabel. Her books, Hidden Lies and Other Stories, Walking the Earth, and The Base Stealers Club, can be found through book stores or Amazon.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Vivian_Gilbert_Zabel
http://EzineArticles.com/?Too-Much-Detail-Stops-the-Flow&id=404896

Strong Nouns and Verbs Are the Friends of Creative Writing

I wrote a post on this topic a few months ago, but some things are worth repeating...and, in this case, Lisa Silverman does it well.

Writing Tip: Why Nouns and Verbs Are Your Friends
by: Lisa Silverman

"The wearily handsome, nervous, stubble-chinned man slowly and carefully got out of bed when he heard the soft, mysterious sound of footsteps in his apartment."

OR

"The ex-con bolted up, rubbed his eyes and then the stubble on his chin, and crept out of bed. Those footsteps didn’t belong in his apartment."

Look at the above sentences, and see if you can figure out why the second example is better written than the first. If you still don’t know, look above that. At the risk of stating the obvious: nouns and verbs are the backbone of any sentence, and thus of all writing. I could have made my title really long and added “. . . and Adjectives and Adverbs Are Your Enemies,” but I like to keep it short.

It’s not only about eliminating adjectives and adverbs so that your writing contains few words that aren’t nouns and verbs. After all, if we did that to the first example, we’d be left with:

"The man got out of bed when he heard the sound of footsteps in his apartment."

Not very exciting, is it? That’s why it’s important to focus your writing not only on nouns and verbs, but on interesting nouns and verbs. I began my second example with “The ex-con,” but of course, I’m inventing a sentence that has no manuscript surrounding it--no context. If we’ve already met the character, use his name or a more descriptive noun such as mine. If you’re introducing a new character, use the best noun possible. “The businessman” would evoke a completely different image in your readers’ minds, and it would be a stronger image than “The blond, well-groomed, middle-aged man.”

Why is one noun stronger than three adjectives (and one verb stronger than three adverbs)? Sure, we can picture a guy who’s blond, well-groomed, and middle-aged, and we might guess from that description that he’s a businessman. We can picture a “wearily handsome, nervous, stubble-chinned man” and perhaps guess that he’s an ex-con. But using the noun rather than a string of adjectives accomplishes two important things: First, it adds action to the character’s description. “Ex-con” not only calls forth a set of physical attributes, but also, by definition, tells you something about the guy’s life outside of this moment: he’s trying to recover from his time in the slammer and go straight. A “businessman” probably looks a certain way, and presumably spends his days doing business.

Then again, maybe the guy isn’t trying to go straight. Maybe he wants to return to a life of crime. Which brings me to the second advantage: involving the reader’s mind in the storytelling. If you string together a list of adjectives, you’re feeding a character to your readers without allowing them to draw their own pictures. Part of the fun--and the fascination--of fiction is the fact that everyone who turns the final page of a book has read a different one. And the more you allow people to be cocreators of your characters, your settings, etc., the more enveloped in your novel’s fictional world they will become.

Or in your nonfiction book’s world--nonfiction writers must leave less to the reader’s imagination, but editing using this principle will make nonfiction stronger as well. As with any other tips, customize it to your writing. It’s also, as I mentioned, about brevity. I don’t need to explain why “crept out of bed” beats “slowly and carefully got out of bed.”

Of course, adjectives and adverbs have their places. Otherwise languages wouldn’t contain so many. You might even find a few in this article (only a few). Again, customize this editing technique to your writing. Read a few pages and see if you find yourself using dull nouns such as “man” or “thing” a lot--chances are they’re surrounded by adjectives. If not, the potential book sitting in front of you may be dull indeed. Don’t go crazy with your thesaurus looking for obscure nouns to replace “man,” but do use this technique as a way to vary word choice. And, if you don’t have a thesaurus, for god’s sake, get one. The thesaurus in Microsoft Word, or anywhere online, won’t hold a candle to the old-fashioned bound kind.

Replace adjectives with more interesting, descriptive nouns, and watch your writing become streamlined, subtly evocative, laced with intrigue, varied in word choice… Oops, those are all adjective phrases. Just think of this noun: “bestseller.”

About The Author

Lisa Silverman is a freelance book editor and works in the copyediting department at one of New York's most prestigious literary publishing houses. She has also worked as a ghostwriter and a literary agent representing both book authors and screenwriters. She founded http://www.BeYourOwnEditor.com in order to provide writers with free advice on both writing and the publishing business.

More on Clichés

When to Weed out Clichés

Don’t think that you now have to go and write a flawless first draft of your next piece, completely clear of clichés. If you try that, you’ll probably never get that first draft written. My advice, and the technique I use, is to write your first draft with whatever words come to mind, cliché or not. If possible, let the manuscript sit a while before going back to it. Then, with a fresh mindset, you can go through and weed out all the undesirables, taking the time to find descriptions that really say what you want them to say.

Clichés in Dialogue

Some might disagree with me on this, but I believe it’s all right to use clichés in dialogue. Make that limited clichés in dialogue. Why? Because people use clichés when they speak! Most people are lazy when they speak; very few ordinary people take the time to develop new and interesting descriptions during the course of a conversation.

You could make clichés a character trait for one of your characters, by having them speak almost exclusively in clichés. (Careful, though; that could get old quickly!) On the flip side, if you have a character who is exceptionally bright (or exceptionally full of himself), you probably want to avoid clichés and make that the character who does come up with original sayings.

How you use clichés in dialogue is up to you. The lesson to take away here, though, is, as in all things, moderation.

Now, knock ‘em out, tiger!

Clichés: Creative Writing Killers

Few things kill your writing more quickly than overuse of clichés. Don’t know what I mean? Try this:

The woman’s hair was black as midnight. Her face was smooth as silk, but her fear had turned her white as a sheet, making her ruby-red lips stand out in stark contrast. Her eyes were as blue as a summer’s sky, and they pleaded with him not to dash her hopes. She’d tried to play it dumb, but now he could tell she was smart as a whip.

See how many clichés I used there? It was overdone, of course, but it gives you an idea of how dull clichés can make your writing.

How to Identify a Cliché

Chances are, if you’ve heard or seen the phrase before, it’s a cliché. If you’re not sure, though, you can go to a website like http://www.westegg.com/cliche/ and type in a keyword (you may need to try more than one).

Since I have a cat, I typed in the word “cat” as a keyword. Here are just a few of the clichés that came up:

Raining cats and dogs
There’s more than one way to skin a cat
Let the cat out of the bag
Fat cat
Cat’s meow
Cat’s pajamas
Cat got your tongue?
Busy as a cat on a hot tin roof
All cats are grey in the dark
Nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs
Curiosity killed the cat
Look what the cat dragged in
The cat who swallowed the canary
Not enough room to swing a cat
When the cat's away, the mice will play

How to Rid Yourself of Clichés

Unfortunately, it’s not easy to get rid of clichés. The reason they are clichés to begin with is that they describe things so darn well! The only antidotes to clichés are thoughtfulness and originality—neither one easy to develop if it doesn’t come naturally. The only way to develop those traits is to practice. Look at things from all angles. Use all your senses. Look at the world around you for new comparisons. For a start, you might try reading through a thesaurus to synonyms of some of the words in the cliché. It won’t be easy, but it will become easier as you practice—and your writing will show the results of your hard work.

Creative Writing: Finding the Poetic in Your Prose--Part 2

Yesterday I talked about using poetry to enhance your prose. Here’s another example, on a darker note—Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Sonnet V”:

If I should learn, in some quite casual way,
That you were gone, not to return again—
Read from the back-page of a paper, say,
Held by a neighbor in a subway train,
How at the corner of this avenue
And such a street (so are the papers filled)
A hurrying man—who happened to be you—
At noon to-day had happened to be killed,
I should not cry aloud—I could not cry
Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place—
I should but watch the station lights rush by
With a more careful interest on my face,
Or raise my eyes and read with greater care
Where to store furs and how to treat the hair.

Her use of the everyday as a setting for the tragic news highlights the grief—backlights it, so to speak. More than that, she seems to effortlessly portray a grief too sacred to be shared with strangers on a subway…a grief so profound it has to be held in for a more private moment. Above all, she does it using only 118 words, and in a way more compelling than if she’d used the hackneyed cliché, “A grief too deep for words.”

From these two examples alone, you can see how the poetic perspective applies not only to poetry, but also to compelling prose. Imagine paragraphs or scenes written with the same mind-set, the same attention to every word, the same sensory-based emotion. Better yet, try it out! Take one of these poems, or another you like, and write a piece of prose—fact or fiction—using the skills of the poet. It may take some practice. Done correctly, though, it will lift your prose to a whole new altitude.

Creative Writing: Finding the Poetic in Your Prose

Most prose writers are not great poets, and most poets are not great prose writers. Oh, there are exceptions, like Shakespeare, but they’re usually the literary exceptions that prove the rule. However, that doesn’t mean there should be no crossover between the styles. If you’re a prose writer, the fact that your poetry will never equal Keats shouldn’t keep you from trying!

The most basic reason for a prose writer to pursue poetry—both reading and writing—is because it is enjoyable. However, there’s more to it than that. Poetry also offers a different view of the world, a certain slant of sunlight and shadow that only poetry can provide. When you look through the eyes of a poet, you see things differently. When you apply that special vision to your prose, you get spectacular results.

To be clear, I’m not referring to what some call “poetic rambling”—just the opposite. I’m talking about the poet’s ability to seize an emotion, event, or image and narrow it to only a few words…or cast it in moonlight instead of sunlight…or squeeze it into iambic pentameter without making it seem squeezed. It’s that kind of ability that can benefit your prose.

For instance, let’s consider how modern poet Lorraine R. Sautner approaches the “boring” profession of accounting in this excerpt from her poem, “The Alchemist.”

If accountancy were a dark art,
he’d be a High Priest,
cloaked in deductible
interest income, conjuring
diabolical formulas of amortization,
and whispering incantations
in praise of the unholy
power of compound
interest…
…
…In a state of near exhaustion
and with trembling digits, he
raises to the heavens
his financial masterpiece,
lit from within by a supernatural
actuarial luminescence.
And in a final gesture of renunciation,
gently surrenders it to his Outbox.

…the expense reports are now complete.

While it’s true you would never write prose exactly like that, think how much stronger your descriptive writing would be if you used that kind of imagery in everything you wrote (well, maybe not in an expense report, but you get the idea!).

Creative Words for Creative Writing

Last time I left you with the instruction, "never use two words where one will suffice." Or, you could think of the cliché, “Less is more.” Economy of words is one of the things that separates a professional writer from an amateur. I may be the wrong person to preach this point, since this is one of my weaknesses. The fact is, though, anyone can use lots of words and say nothing. The real test of a good writer is the ability to use the fewest possible words to communicate the largest possible message.

If you don’t believe me, try this: without doing any research, write 400 words about jumping rope for weight loss. Even if you don’t know anything about it, you’ll probably be able to flesh out your 400 words without any problem. Now, think of the person who’s influenced you the most, and reduce their life story to 400 words. Which is more difficult? I’m going to bet you had more trouble fitting more into fewer words. Yet, if you actually did the exercise, you’ll find the 400-word life story contains far more substance than the jump-rope description. “Less is more.”

This skill goes far beyond weeding adverbs and adjectives from your writing. It means choosing the premium word for each thought. As I’ve said before, that doesn’t mean you have to pause in the middle of a creative rush and flip through your thesaurus. If you’re anything like me, you’d never get anything done. It does mean going back through your writing and making sure you’ve packed as much meaning as you can into every single word and phrase. Use action verbs and concrete nouns. Find ways to cut out words by rephrasing. If a phrase doesn’t advance the plot, news story, poem – whatever – at all, take it out (we’ll talk more about advancing the plot in a later post).

If you forget (or ignore) everything else from this post, remember this: make every word count.

Using the “Write” Words to Strengthen Your Writing -- Part 2

Okay, we’ve already talked about the importance of keeping adverbs to a minimum. What about adjectives? Adjectives, of course, are the words that modify, or describe, nouns – pretty, large, angry, petite, etc. I’m not going to spend much time on adjectives. I do want to point out that, while not as problematic as adverbs, they can be overused. Like adverbs, they have valid uses, but they often provide the lazy way out when it comes to descriptive writing.

If you want to know if your adjective is needed, test it in much the same way you would an adverb. For instance, instead of “a big house,” you’d want to say, “a mansion.” That’s a simple example, but you get the idea. Here’s a point I’ll probably repeat again: never use two words where one will suffice. But that’s for another post.

Using the “Write” Words to Strengthen Your Writing

Your ability to use the right words to convey your message is one of the most important aspects of creative writing. Using the wrong words can not only muddle your message, it can also weakens your writing. One example of this is the overuse of adverbs.

Adverbs are often called "-ly words," because they commonly end in -ly. By definition, the adverb is the part of speech that "modifies a verb, adjective, or another adverb." In my last post, I quoted Stephen King's words, "Kill your darlings." Adverbs were some of the darlings to which he was referring.

When you overuse adverbs, it weakens your writing, whether you write fiction, hard news, essay or poetry. For example, instead of, "She cried really hard," say, "She sobbed," or, even better, "Sobs wracked her body." See how much stronger an image that creates? The reader can envision what you're writing about.

Of course, in the throes of creativity, it's difficult to stop and weed out all the adverbs. I don't suggest you do that. Rather, once you've captured your thoughts on paper, go back through and pick out each adverb and put it through a test. Can the verb-adverb combo be replaced by a stronger verb? If so, replace it. If you can't find a stronger verb, see if the adverb is even needed. Often, it won't be. For example, in the phrase, "He was terribly handsome in a forbidding kind of way," do you need the word "terribly"? No. When you say, "The play was hugely successful," do you need to say "hugely"?

It's your writing. Why don't you decide?