Free verse is wonderful because it has very few distinct rules and boundaries. Instead of fitting content to form the content shapes the form. The rhythm of can vary throughout the poem as the poet changes line length and meter to emphasize words and sounds. Though the words often do not rhyme, they flow along in their own uneven pattern.

Free verse is patterned after speech and images rather than by strict metrical schemes and rhyme, yet it is poetry because it contains complex patters that weave into a coherent whole. Readers should be able to determine the rules and boundaries the author has established for the poem. You cannot create poetry without rules. Like all poetry free verse should embrace basic poetic precepts and be concise.

Walt Whitman provides numerous examples of how to write free verse in his signature collection, Leaves of Grass. “Aboard at a Ship’s Helm” is one of my favorites.

ABOARD, at a ship’s helm,
A young steersman, steering with care.

A bell through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing,
An ocean-bell-O a warning bell, rock’d by the waves.

O you give good notice indeed, you bell by the sea-reefs ringing,
Ringing, ringing, to warn the ship from its wreck-place.

For, as on the alert, O steersman, you mind the bell’s admonition,
The bows turn,-the freighted ship, tacking, speeds away under her gray sails,
The beautiful and noble ship, with all her precious wealth, speeds away gaily and safe.

But O the ship, the immortal ship! O ship aboard the ship!
O ship of the body-ship of the soul-voyaging, voyaging, voyaging.

Jacob

I have compiled a list of free online writing classes. Please let me know what you think of these courses as you complete them.

Introductory Writing Classes

• Introduction to Literature: In this introductory course, you will take learn about character development, imagery, poetic language, and more. [Western Kentucky University]
• What is Good Writing?: Learn what constitutes good writing and the importance of effective writing. [The Open University]
• Start Writing Fiction: Dive into character development, setting, genre, dialog, and more. [The Open University]

Creative Writing

• Poetry: Learn about the form and elements of poetry. [College of DuPage]
• Writing Challenges: Tackle a series of creative writing challenges. [Warwick University]
• The Creative Spark: Discover how to create your own creative process with this course. [MIT]
• Expository Writing: This course focuses on narration, critique, argument, and persuasion in autobiographical writing. [MIT]

Grammar & Language

• English Grammar in Context: Learn about the importance of grammar, features of speech, and more. [The Open University]
• Form and Uses of Language: Examine the different ways language can be used by studying the varied works of Siegfried Sassoon. [The Open University]
• The Syntax of Natural Language: Dive into the theories and technical aspects of grammar and language. [University of Pennsylvania]
• Introducing Representation: Learn how to use language as a way to convey thoughts. [The Open University]

Persuasive Writing

• Rhetoric: Learn the art and theory of persuasive writing. [MIT]
• Advanced Essay Workshop: Dive into an advanced study of rhetoric and prose style techniques. [MIT]
• Rhetorical and Critical Writing Assessment: Learn how to distinguish between fact, and fiction, and support a position. [Western Governors]

Copyright & Plagiarism

• Text as Property/Property as Text: Take a look at ownership, plagiarism, and lots of other moral and legal topics in writing. [Rice]

Social Writing

• Writing and Experience - Culture Shock! Writing, Editing, and Publishing in Cyberspace: Learn how to write for an online audience. [MIT]
• Writing and Experience: Learn how to write about differing social experiences. [MIT]

Jacob

There were a few common mistakes made in several of the poems submitted to the March 2009 Poetry Contest. Those entering the April 2009 Poetry Contest should take the following suggestions under advisement. These suggestions were derived from insights Lance Larsen*, a creative writing professor at Brigham Young University, shared with me.

• Chopping up prose does not create poetry.
• A poem should make or have a point. Yes, there is a layer of abstraction, but a poem should not be so abstract that is means nothing.
• Poetry should have tension and opposition.
• Make arguments through imagery and metaphors.
• Use fresh language and avoid clichés.
• Be concise. Poems should be composed with the fewest words possible.
• Use concrete examples that entice and elicit the senses.
• Link form and content in appropriate ways in both closed form and open form poems: rhyme, meter, stanza pattern, enjambed vs. end-stopped lines, alliteration, assonance, caesura, juxtaposition, syntax, diction, and other figurative patterns.

Jacob

*Lance Larsen received a Ph.D. Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. He has taught creative writing and poetry courses at Brigham Young University since 1993.

Since our mantra at Review Fuse is “Igniting Creativity,” I always try and keep my eye out for book and articles about creativity. Recently, I’ve been reading Uncommon Genius, a great book by Denise Shekerjian in which she attempts to trace the creative impulse by interviewing forty winners of the MacArthur Award. If you’re not familiar with this award, it makes for a pretty good story in itself—basically, the award is a cash sum given to people who “show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work.”

In an interview with Poet and MacArthur Fellow, Douglas Crase, he talked about inspiration. Since it was something I’d mused about in a previous post, the paragraphs really jumped out at me. He said:

Inspiration is a funny concept, and I think it gets in the way sometimes more than it does any good. If you think of those moments when you were really writing well and turning out something you are really happy with and that you’re not ashamed to look at for the rest of your life, often you think it’s inspiration because you don’t know exactly how it got there. You look at it and think, This is so much better than I could possibly do. I must have been inspired.

But if you then think back to that moment and try to reconstruct in your mind how the moment was contrived, how it was arranged, and what the conditions were for that so-called inspiration to happen, is seems to me that you can try to reproduce those conditions.  And if you reproduce those conditions it seems to me you have increased the probability that the ‘inspiration’ will visit again just as certain chemicals combine under some conditions and not under others. Providing those same conditions increases the probability that you’re going to get the combustion, the combination, the fertilization. An event just might take place.

Crase then describes how he practiced this with his poem, “Cuylerville” by going to the place and just sitting and looking around for a long time. Then he found a song that reminded him of the place and made a tape that repeated the same song over and over to listen to.

Of course Crase is not the only one to talk of certain conditions affecting his ability to write. In On Writing by Stephen King (which we’ve mentioned here before), he talked of a proper writing space “with a door you can close.” He also mentioned that he works to loud music—AC/DC, Metallica, and Guns N’ Roses—and that he thought it important to adhere to a schedule.

And there are many more examples: During the 1920’s many writers and artists believed you had to live in Paris to be inspired. Truman Capote said he did his best work in hotel rooms. Kipling required a specific, obsidian black ink.  Dickens turned his bed north, believing that magnetic forces enabled his creativity. Kant wrote in bed at the same time every day staring at a tower out his window. When trees started to block the view, he had them cut down. French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac required copious amounts of coffee to work. And Beethoven stimulated his mind to write music by pouring ice-cold water over his head.

So what about you? Have you thought of the conditions that bring about your best work? One of my best times is late at night when everyone else is asleep. I put on my comfortable headphones and listen to some classical music or sometimes “The World’s Greatest” by R. Kelly—I know it’s corny and I really don’t like R. Kelly, but for some reason this song just gets me in a positive mood. I often start by reading my most recent feedback from Review Fuse, then I close all other programs and start typing.

Share what works for you in the comments. Do you have “inspiring” conditions? Make sure to use them to do your best work.

I read some really bad dialogue yesterday. Actually, I read it five times and still couldn’t figure out who was talking. In honor of this terrible dialog I have constructed my own rotten dialog. This bad dialog comes from a dinnertime conversation a few stupid cave trolls recently had. If you could have watched these trolls have this conversation the dialog would be meaningful and easy to follow, but without the visual, you will probably have to guess at who is talking.

“Why didn’t you let us eat her?” “Now she has run away and we have nothing to eat!” “Just eat your club” “You’ll eat what I tell you to eat.” “Why don’t you try to make me eat my club?” “Shut up.” “Stop fighting and let’s find a tasty fawn or ram to boil.”

Can you flesh out this bad dialog and turn it into good dialog? Please post your good dialog solution as a comment. It will be fun to read each other’s examples and see how many ways this bad dialog was interpreted.

Jacob

Readers are fickle friends who often act like the urchins who draw a mustache on a picture of a pretty model or add horns to a photo of the Pope as they interpret our metaphors literally or try to extrapolate deep meaning from a simple fact. W. H. Auden described the author/reader relationship a bit more eloquently, “In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.”

How can we hope to gain faithfulness from such an unpredictable audience?

Keep the audience guessing. Rarely, if ever, let the reader guess the right answer. Plan a story with sharp turns your audience never sees coming. Let your readers speculate about what will happen but don’t allow them to be right. During the climax, when your reader is certain he “knows” what is going to happen, end with a twist that both surprises the reader and feels natural. If you can get your audience to say “Wow, I didn’t expect that, but it makes perfect sense” then you will turn their whorish ways into faithfulness.

Jacob

Several years ago I helped an academic research library put several rare book and manuscript collections online. These collections included Greek manuscripts from the 5th century, historic photographs from settlers of the western United States, Eisenhower’s Communiqués from World War II, and a large collection of theses and dissertations. The prehistoric interface I used to create these repositories didn’t even have a spell checker, not that it would have done me any good with this typo.

My boss’s, boss’s, boss, otherwise known as the head of the library, asked me to create a new collection for him to present to a large group of wealthy donors during a fund raiser. When he stood up in front of the donors to showcase the new collection he was mortified because of my typo. Apparently I had created the “Moron Theses” collection.

What is your typo horror story?


Jacob

The “Moron Theses” collection should have been “Mormon Theses”.

by Matt Toler

Last October, shortly before finishing the first draft of my novel, Treadpath, I attended a talk by Coraline and The Graveyard Book author Neil Gaiman in Chicago. The Q&A session at the end largely consisted of questions about writing and process. When asked whether a new writer should write short stories or novels, Gaiman responded along the lines of: “I’d recommend short stories, because it’s important to be able to finish.” I sat there and thought “Dammit, I’m doing it backwards.”

Treadpath began as an amalgamation of the “what if…?” daydreams of bored college library employee and the sort of tribute that’s sometimes required of someone who has been genuinely moved by an experience. I always tell people that I never cared whether it turned out to be a bestseller or even something that could end up published, it was just something I had to do. So, armed with a bundle of loose concepts and an ample amount of drive, I set out to unconsciously make the journey to a completed novel as miserable an experience as possible.

There’s an exquisite sort of self-loathing that comes from re-editing eighty pages to convert the story from first person to third person. There’s a strange sort of satisfaction that comes from throwing away forty pages that don’t fit the outline that only bothered to put itself together once far too much had already been written. I liken these processes to my chosen career as a graphic designer, where the self-editing is all visual and on-the-fly. I have to have something to work with, a content base, before I can start building the final product. With the novel, this became a labor-intensive process because there was no other source for the material other than what I could put down in a night or a weekend.

I imagine that a lot of people who set out to write a novel end up doing what I did for the first three years of the project. I’d take it out and mess around with it for a few weeks, decide it was too much of a mess in its current state and shelve it again. It could even be that some people can actually finish a book that way. I can’t. I had to really ask myself what I wanted out of the project and what it was going to take to finish it. My answer came in the form of spending two to three hours a night after work during most of 2008 stitching together the old pieces, filling in the gaps in the early parts and then finishing the damn thing off.

I made a couple of promises to myself. I promised to stick to my outline, which I strenuously reworked until all the pieces fit. I promised myself that the hard part was getting the thing down and not worrying about every little detail on the first pass. This was a lie, but it kept me going to believe it.

It became apparent soon after reading my first draft that I wasn’t going to be the type of writer who can generate finished material on the first try. The first round of edits may as well have been a new novel for all of the fixes that took place. Each subsequent round got shorter (I ended up doing four) but there came a point where I became aware of the possibility of overworking the material. That’s where I stopped.

So now I’ve got this manuscript. I consider it a readable, if still somewhat flawed, piece. I don’t see it being taught in English 101 two hundred years from now, but it tells the story I wanted to tell, which was my goal. I’m considering sending it to a literary agent since I don’t relish the idea of paying an editor on my own. I’m considering self-publishing. I’m considering donation-based digital distribution. For the moment, I’m content to send the finished product to my friends and family as sort of an ultimate token of gratitude.

I learned that there’s a momentum to the process that’s almost addictive when it’s working correctly. I learned that reading your words out loud is a quick and painful way to determine whether a passage is working. I learned that there’s a price to be paid for getting the first draft down quickly. I re-learned three quarters of my high school English education. I learned that you have to trust your reader. I learned that there’s nothing in the world like holding a printed and bound work in your hands and knowing that the thing is, for better or worse, yours and may outlive you.

Good luck, fellow writers. I’m looking forward to learning from all of you.

Matt Toler lives and works in Chicago as a graphic designer. He took a break from writing political and social rants on his blog to finish his first novel, Treadpath. It is currently unpublished.

Several years ago I worked as a software engineer. I never had trouble writing applications that I loved to use. But I found it difficult to write applications that others loved to use.

I discovered the key to developing software that others loved to use was to involve users early and often. Allowing users to work with the alpha and beta versions of my applications allowed me to fix the interface, fix bugs, and change the direction of the programming project to better meet the user’s expectations.

In order to avoid writing stories that only you will love, you should pick two or three critics who will read your writing early and often. Incorporating their feedback into your work is a great way to strengthen your writing. The famed author Barbara Tuchman described her reader centric approach to writing when she said “no writing comes alive unless the writer sees across his desk a reader, and searches constantly for the word or phrase which will carry the image he wants the reader to see, and arouse the emotion he wants him to feel. Without consciousness of a live reader, what a man writes will die on his page.” I think we should take this a step further and involve readers throughout the writing process.

Do you need some feedback on your writing? Submit your work for critique now or set up your free account.

Jacob

When I was in Thailand I met a shoe peddler who claimed to have the hottest new shoes. When I inquired about the brand of the shoes the peddler enthusiastically replied “Nike by Adidas” while pulling a pair of shoes that had both the Nike and Adidas brands from under his shoe stand. When I think about these shoes I wonder if they can be considered original.

The word original makes me think of something fresh, inventive, or novel. Based on this definition I would say these shoes are original. It certainly took inventive and novel thinking to combine two competitors into this crazy product. But can a mutant creation that blatantly rips off original creators really be original?

Original products like original writing are hard to find. A lot of writers waste their time trying to combine their favorite authors into the Nike by Adidas perversion. I think François R. Chateaubriand best described what originality means in the writing community when he wrote “the original writer is not he who does not imitate others, but he who can be imitated by none.” While originality is difficult to achieve, I agree with Herman Melville who said “it is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”

Do you wonder if your work is truly original? Please join our writing community let your peers help you evaluate the originality of your work.

Jacob