Ghost Writers’ Writing Exercises
Here are a couple elements we discuss and write on during the Ghost Writer sessions which are randomly held somewhere in Austin, Texas.
-Cinquain (pronounced SING-cane) – Poetry with five lines. Line 1 has one word (the title). Line 2 has two words that describe the title. Line 3 has three words that tell the action. Line 4 has four words that express the feeling, and line 5 has one word which recalls the title. (namely two in the first, four in the second, six in the third, and eight in the fourth, before returning to two syllables on the last line)
-Tetractys is five-line poem of 20 syllables with a title, arranged in the following order: 1,2,3,4,10.with each line standing as a phrase on its own.It can be inverted,doubled etc and was created by the late English poet Ray Stebbings.
-Alliteration-a rhetorical stylistic device that consists in repeating the same consonant sound at the beginning of several words in close succession. (stops: [p], [t], [k], [n], and [m])
-Assonance is refrain of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences, and together with alliteration and consonance serves as one of the building blocks of verse. For example, in the phrase “Do you like blue?”, the /uː/ (“o”/”ou”/”ue” sound) is repeated within the sentence and is assonant.
-Consonance is the repetition, at close intervals, of the final consonants of accented syllables or important words, especially at the ends of words, as in blank and think or strong.
-Limericks are short sometimes bawdy, humorous poems of consisting of five Anapaestic lines. Lines 1, 2, and 5 of a Limerick have seven to ten syllables and rhyme with one another. Lines 3 and 4 have five to seven syllables and also rhyme with each other.
-Anapaest – a metrical foot of three syllables, two short (or unstressed) followed by one long (or stressed). In classical quantitative meters it consists of two short syllables followed by a long one.
The following is from Byron’s The Destruction of Sennacherib:
The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
-Onomatopoeia is a figure of speech in which words are used to imitate sounds. “oink” or “meow” or “roar” croak zap click crow cuckoo
-Phonaesthetics is the claim or study of inherent pleasantness or beauty (euphony) or unpleasantness (cacophony) of the sound of certain words and sentences. Derives from Greek meaning “good sound”. Euphony is refers to pleasant spoken sound that is created by smooth consonants such as “ripple’. Euphony is an agreeable sound reflected in the phonetic quality of poetic words.
-Euphemism is the substitution of a soft agreeable expression instead of one that is harsh or unpleasant. For example ‘pass away’ as opposed to ‘die’.(a figure of speech in which someone absent or dead or something nonhuman is addressed as if it were alive and present and was able to reply.)
-Meters: The meter in poetry involves the exact arrangements of syllables into repeated patterns called feet within a line.
The number of metrical feet in a line are described as follows:
▪ Dimeter — two feet
▪ Trimeter — three feet
▪ Tetrameter — four feet
▪ Pentameter — five feet
▪ Hexameter — six feet
▪ Heptameter — seven feet
▪ Octameter — eight feet
There will be another Ghost Writers Session Soon!
