This month, my theme for JPC Allen Writes is about how other arts inspire and influence writing stories. Although poetry and prose are often seen as distant cousins, writing poetry can improve your novel or any story you’re creating.
Improve Descriptions
Writing and reading poetry has made me look at my surroundings in a different way. Poetry often uses figurative language, such as similes and metaphors. When I use these elements in my prose, it makes descriptions more vivid and can also reveal something about the character who is doing the describing.
In my first novel, A Shadow on the Snow, I had my main character Rae describe the route to her dad’s farm in rural Ohio this way: “The Rust Bucket {Rae’s truck} followed the asphalt like a ship over the crests and troughs of waves.”
The description not only tells readers the road is hilly but it also show Rae’s background. She lived for four years on the coast of North Carolina before moving to Ohio and bring that experience to her descriptions.
Improve Diction
I love short forms of poetry, especially haiku. The seventeen syllables in haiku force me to describe something and set a mood in the most precise way I can. That’s good training for writing stories. Although it depends on the genre, most readers don’t want lengthy descriptions to weigh down the pace. So poetry can help me be thoughtful in selecting the best words for the most impact.
Although I drop in the physical characteristics of Rae’s dad, Mal, throughout a novel, I usually introduce him by describing him as Thor in a sheriff’s uniform. Those five words bring an immediate image to the minds of English readers, and since the Marvel movies, most of the world.
Improve Rhythm
Most poetry has a rhythm. Now unless I’m writing a novel in verse, I don’t want my book to sound like Dr. Seuss got a hold of it. But sometimes, a particular scene or a conversation will benefit from a definite rhyme. Sometimes, I use it to inject humor in a story.
I also think action scenes have a rhythm. Alternating between physical action and the POV character’s thoughts is like a dance that I want to sweep the reader into. If the scene is mostly action, readers are kept at arm’s length from the POV character and can’t experience the thrills through that character’s senses. But if the scene consists mostly of an internal monologue as the character deals with the action, it’s not an action scene any more.
For writing prompts for poetry, click here.
Does poetry inspire your prose writing? How?
Yes. I write open poetry (aka naked poetry). Sometimes pieces from my stories make it into my poems, like “Her tan lay crisp on sunbaked sand” and “She was the shadow of a soporiferous color” became altered text in my poem “Siriasis.” The story was about a murder on a beach that never saw publication. It also produced “Night in that city had a strange sound the way roof ice speaks before it melts, pools down, rushes gutters, and raises any river’s rage below it,” which turned up altered in my poem “Melted Ice.” I do better at writing poems and short stories; it’s the longer stuff I fail at.
The desciption of the city at night is fantastic.
Well this post just inspired me to spend some time with poetry to improve my writing! Thanks for the great ideas!