Poetry
Engaging the Heart: Poetic Tools for Writing Emotion (Part 2)
by Jen Bailey
In Part 1, we looked at how onomatopoeia and phonetic intensives can help you evoke emotion in your readers when writing emotionally detached characters. Today we will look at two additional sound-related poetic tools that can be carefully crafted to obtain your desired effect and keep your reader engaged.
Poetic Tool #3: Assonance
The long o sound we just looked at is not only an example of the use of phonetic intensives, it is also an example of assonance. Assonance is defined by Janet Burroway in Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft as the correspondence of vowel sounds in words.
In the following passages from Quaking, the assonance is prominent:
“leering at me, sneering” (Erskine 44)
“his oily voice” (Erskine 45)
“I see his greasy black hair” (Erskine 45)
The context of each of these lines is the presence of Matt’s bully, Rat, and she does not express her emotions at all. Instead, the repetition of vowel sounds in these examples evokes a feeling of unsteadiness and invasion – exactly what Matt must feel but can’t express.
Poetic Tool #4: Consonance
In The Sounds of Poetry, Robert Pinsky defines consonance as “a repeated consonant sound, as in ‘stroke’ and ‘ache'” (124). Erskine repeats a k/ck sound in the following passages in the context of Matt’s encounters with the Rat:
“His dark hair is rigid and sticks out at the back of his neck” (15)
“His panicked eyes flit around the parking lot” (82).
In this last example, Matt witnesses the Rat’s fear of his own father – a fear she recognizes but cannot name. The repeated k/ck sound is choppy and evokes an uneasy, jittery feeling – the kind Matt was likely experiencing in this scene.
Alliteration is a form of consonance in which there is a correspondence of consonants at the beginning of words or stressed syllables (Burroway 370). Another form of consonance is sibilance, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as an undue prominence of the hissing s sound. Consonance can have a magnifying effect when writers carefully craft their sentences. In the following sentence from Quaking, a general play with consonant sounds results in a very sinister-sounding section:
‘“Chicken-shit!’ the Rat yells in my face, and I clutch my chest but I leave a chink exposed and his elbow catches my rib. He shoves me and I fall to the floor” (Erskine 217).
The hissing “s” and “sh” sounds are sibilant:
shit yells face chest exposed catches
The ‘ch’ sound alliterates at the beginning and middle of some words,
chicken clutch chest chink catches
furthermore, consonance is developed with the “t” sound,
shit Rat chest
and the “k/ck” sound,
chicken chink
These sounds all echo each other, thereby increasing the menacing nature of this passage. Because of careful word choices the reader gets the feeling of fear and loss of control that the emotionally detached protagonist either does not admit to or cannot describe.
Poets rely on the sounds of language to evoke emotion in their readers. Onomatopoeia, phonetic intensives, assonance, consonance are among the many tools they use to achieve this. While these tools will beautify and intensify prose with any kind of character, poetic language is especially invaluable for evoking the emotion that ventures beyond the emotional vocabulary and awareness of those characters who are emotionally detached.
Be sure you didn’t miss the first half of this article: Engaging the Heart – Part 1
Jen Bailey lives in Ottawa, Ontario and has a Master of Fine Arts degree in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She loves playing around with rhythm and sound in her writing. Should you like that kind of thing too, she recommends you read Quaking by Kathryn Erskine, Last Night I Sang to the Monster by Benjamin Alire Saenz, Meg Rosoff’s How I Live Now, and any poetry you can get your hands on.
Follow her musings on writers’ craft and the writing life at writefiercely.wordpress.com
This blog post was brought to you as part of the March Dystropian Madness Blog Series.
Sources:
Burroway, Janet. Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft. Boston: Longman, 2010. Print.
Erskine, Kathryn. Quaking. New York: Philomel Books, 2007. Print.
Pinsky, Robert. The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999. Print.
Engaging the Heart: Poetic Tools for Writing Emotion (Part 1)
by Jen Bailey
As writers who are true to our characters, we allow them to express themselves as they are able. We typically rely on actions, dialogue, physical reactions, and thoughts to do this, but what’s a writer to do when the character in question is emotionally detached, that is, unaware of his or her emotions?
Writing emotionally unaware characters can be challenging because they are unable to communicate their feelings about what would normally be viewed as emotionally-charged incidents. This kind of detachment can be all-encompassing (e.g. a result of psychological trauma: abuse, neglect, abandonment), or transient (e.g. hearing very jarring news). The character may also have a highly intellectual and logical personality and not be attuned to their own emotion. No matter what the source of detachment, if not handled carefully, there is a great chance of losing your reader if they can’t become, or stay, emotionally engaged in your story.
In part one of this blog post, I’ll discuss a couple of ways in which you can engage your reader’s heart all while staying true to your emotionally detached character. Using examples from the novel Quaking by Kathryn Erskine, I’ll show you how you can evoke the emotion your character cannot express through the use of sound-related poetic language.
Poetic Tool #1: Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoetic words sound like their meanings and call to mind images and/or feelings for the reader. The use of these words is powerful but limited, as they can only be used to describe sounds. Here are some examples of onomatopoetic words – pay attention to what they evoke in you as you read them: ring, hiss, clatter, bang, grunt, slam, and snap.
In Quaking, Matt, an emotionally detached character, is taunted by a bully she nicknamed “Rat.” Erskine describes Matt’s encounter with the Rat as follows:
“I smell his smoke. His sneer and hiss are quiet but still forceful. ‘You’re dead…Quaker!’” (Erskine 217, emphasis added).
The words sneer and hiss are onomatopoetic. They imitate the dark, sinister sound of Rat’s voice for the reader. The reader thus feels Matt’s emotion, even though she cannot express it.
Poetic Tool #2: Phonetic Intensives
Arp and Johnson define phonetic intensives as words “whose sound … to some degree connects to their meaning.” Here are some examples:
It is important to note that while these phonetic intensives can contribute to meaning, they are not in themselves prescriptive of meaning. For example, many words that begin with the ‘fl’ sound can be associated with moving light, but there are many others that have nothing at all to do with that association: think flower, flounder, flask, flamingo. Phonetic intensives must be used judiciously.
Let’s look at an example where they are used well:
I am cold all over. He knows. I am dead. It is really over. (Erskine 217)
The long o sound creates a feeling of a moan coming from Matt and to the ear of the reader. It is like a lament and can place the reader with Matt, evoking the sorrow and melancholy Matt is not expressing in this scene.
While the use of onomatopoeia and phonetic intensives is somewhat limited, the sound-related poetic tools I will be discussing in part 2 can be more carefully crafted to obtain your desired effect and keep your reader engaged.
Stay tuned!
Jen Bailey lives in Ottawa, Ontario and has a Master of Fine Arts degree in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She loves playing around with rhythm and sound in her writing. Should you like that kind of thing too, she recommends you read Quaking by Kathryn Erskine, Last Night I Sang to the Monster by Benjamin Alire Saenz, Meg Rosoff’s How I Live Now, and any poetry you can get your hands on.
Follow her musings on writers’ craft and the writing life at writefiercely.wordpress.com
This blog post was brought to you as part of the March Dystropian Madness Blog Series.
Sources:
Arp, Thomas R. and Greg Johnson. Perrine’s Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry. 11th ed. Boston, Mass.: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2005. Print.
Erskine, Kathryn. Quaking. New York: Philomel Books, 2007. Print.
Exploring the Verse Novel
Verse Novel Format
The Verse Novel (AKA: a novel in poems) is a new form of storytelling that’s hit the YA market in the last five to ten years. Intrigued by this new form, I spent some time during my studies at the Vermont College of Fine Art this past term exploring the nuts and bolts of this form. Due to it’s intense emotional scenes, use of white space, and often edgy content, verse novels have become very popular with teens. Many see this controversial new form as a great way to engage teens in poetry,where others find it to be lazy and examples of poor poetry and storytelling. You may love the form, hate it, or not be familiar with it at all. Either way, I thought I’d share some observations about the format that I’ve discovered in my personal exploration.
What is a Verse Novel?
- The verse novel is a new term that describes a narrative book of poetry.
- This is a highly controversial new book form. Many seem to have trouble classifying the form altogether as it’s not quite a long form poem (like the Iliad) nor is it a collection of poems, nor is it a normal novel. Personally, I’d consider it a new format in storytelling (rather than a genre) similar to how a graphic novel is a new format but can tell any type of story it wants.
Some Examples of Verse Novels Include:
- Books by author Ellen Hopkins: Crank, Tricks, Impulse, Fallout.
- Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse
- Make Lemonade by Virginia Ewer Wolff
- Novels by Sonya Sones: Stop Pretending, What My Mother Doesn’t Know
- Psyche in a Dress by Francesca Lia Block
Use of Poetic Form:
- The verse novel uses the poetic form in some manner. Most YA and MG verse novels use free or open verse. But some use more stringent poetic forms such as ballads.
- Verse novels have a strong use of white space.
- Some of the controversy comes from the fact that verse novels have creative use of line breaks (which some argue doesn’t make it poetry, but prose with weird line breaks).
- There is often creative punctuation (no caps, no periods, etc.)
A Strong Focus on Emotion:
- Poems create impressions of emotions, and some term this as a focus on “emotionalism.”
- The emotion is the most important part in verse novels!
- Some refer to this focus on emotion as creating impressions (like an impressionistic painting).
- There’s often a focus on brief interactions and moments rather than whole scenes.
Plot and the Verse Novel:
- Some verse novels have a cause and event plot, but others don’t. With a focus on emotion, often the causality found in most goal-oriented plots is lacking in a verse novel. But that is not always true.
- The strong focus on emotional moments allows the reader can piece together the events and story like a collage. This creates reader interaction and involvement.
- A verse novel can be organized around a series of scenes or moments that center around a common theme or idea.
- The poems can work like a game of connect the dots. The reader is offered many small moments/impressions that the reader then pieces together to see the whole.
- A lack of plot can sometimes leave the reader wanting more.
Does the Choice to Write a Novel In Verse Need to be Motivated?
- This is one of the controversial topics concerning Verse Novels. Many people argue that YES, there must be motivation for telling a story in verse. Like any craft choice, be it POV or tense, there should be a reason for its existence that’s motivated out of the story itself.
- Often, motivations include some sort of story frame. Examples include the novel as the protagonist’s journal of poems, or the form as a result of a class assignment to explore poetry. Etc. I feel these are too direct interpretations. For example a graphic novel isn’t framed as a character’s sketchbook. The audience accepts it as a new media of storytelling.
- Some creative choices for verse motivation come out of the language itself. It could be a reflection of a character’s manner of speaking. For example in Make Lemonade the line breaks reflect when the character takes a breath.
What are your thoughts on verse novels? Do you love them? Hate them? Want to try writing one?
Ingrid's Notes 