Poetry to Enhance Prose

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.