From 101 Creative Writing Exercises: Rock and Rhyme (Poetry)
From 101 Creative Writing Exercises: Rock and Rhyme Poetry.
Today’s post features an exercise from my book, 101 Creative Writing Exercises, which is filled with exercises from various forms of writing, including fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. It will inspire you while imparting useful writing techniques that are fun and practical.
This exercise comes from “Chapter Eight: Free Verse.” The creative writing exercises in this chapter focus on free-form poetry writing.
I chose this exercise because it’s fun and inspiring. It asks you to use a song as a foundation for writing a poem. Many song lyrics are poems in their own right. This exercise focuses on rhyming but it also shows you how to look at your writing’s musicality and encourages you to think about rhythm and meter in your work.
Give it a try, then come back and tell us what you learned. Feel free to share the poems or lyrics that you write from this exercise in the comments section.
Rock and Rhyme Poetry Writing Exercise
Rhyming poetry goes in and out of vogue all the time, except when it comes to children’s poetry, which is almost always packed with fun and clever rhymes.
Some poets take to rhyming rather easily, and sound-a-like words roll off their tongues like butter. Other poets struggle, dancing through the alphabet and flipping through rhyming dictionaries just to find a rhyme as simple as bat and cat.
Poems that rhyme may be a challenge for some, but they’re still fun to write and a blast to read (they are especially fun to read out loud). Rhyming is good practice for exploring musicality in language and experimenting with word play.
The Exercise
All you need is a song. A rhythmic and rhyme-y song without a lot of fancy runs. You’ll want a relatively simple tune. A short pop song will work well. Forget about classical music because most of it doesn’t have lyrics, and what we’re doing requires words. We’re writers, right?
Rewrite the lyrics but keep the rhythm and rhyme scheme intact. You don’t have to replace the rhyme ring and sing with a rhyme like thing and bling. But you do need to find another rhyming pair (like dance and pants). Your rhymes can be as strict or as loose as you want.
If you do just a few of these, rhyming will start to come more naturally to you, and your rhymes will flow with greater ease.
Try to rewrite the song on your own, but if you’re really struggling, hit up a rhyming dictionary or a thesaurus.
Tips: You might want to start with a short, three-chord pop song. Then, graduate yourself to longer and more complex tunes. If you know all the lyrics to your song, that will be immensely helpful. If not, do an online search to find the lyrics to the song you want to work with.
Variations: Here are a few variations that you can use for this exercise:
- Try it with nursery rhymes: Hey diddle diddle.
- Try it with a famous poem: Shakespeare anyone?
- Try it using a song without lyrics: You’re on your own!
Applications: Working with rhyme helps you think more carefully about word choice and points your focus to the sound and rhythm of a piece of writing. This is also an excellent exercise for anyone who has thought about writing song lyrics or children’s poems and stories.
I Rocked Some Poetry
Here’s my attempt with the first chorus from 80s one-hit wonder 99 Red Balloons by Nena.
The Original Verse
You and I in a little toy shop
Buy a bag of balloons with the money we’ve got
Set them free at the break of dawn
Till one by one they were gone
Back at base, bugs in the software
Flash the message: something’s out there
Floating in the summer sky
Ninety-nine red balloons go by
My Attempt to Catch the Rhyme
Shoes untied at a little bus stop
Sigh and whistle a tune ’cause it’s all you’ve got
Set your feet on the tired green lawn
Tie your shoe, stretch and yawn
Five o’clock, the bus should be here
Time is precious, the deadline is near
Waiting till the bus comes by
Ninety-nine cents just for a ride
Are You Ready to Get Down?
Try it for yourself and post a verse or a chorus in the comments! If you’re looking for a song lyric resource, then check out 99 Red Balloons and 100 Other All-Time Great One-Hit Wonders, which is packed with awesome song lyrics that are ideal for this exercise.
Melissa Donovan is a website designer and copywriter. She writes fiction and poetry and is the founder and editor of Writing Forward, a blog packed with creative writing tips and ideas.
I tried it on one of my favorite John Farnham songs, “Don’t you know it’s magic”.
Original:
See her at the marketplace
Where she comes from nobody knows
Now that you ask me
I guess I like the way she wears her clothes
The way she smiles at him
My heart just swells it grows and grows
You think I’m telling you fairytales
I suppose
My Version:
Can’t you see her smiling face?
Her hips sway wherever she goes.
Blue eyes sparkling bright
makes you wonder what it is she knows.
She walks right by with a grin
leaves hearts broken in rows and rows.
She’s in every man’s fairytales
to her toes.
And this time with Toby Keith’s, “You shouldn’t kiss me like this”:
Original:
I got a funny feeling
The moment that your lips touched mine
Something shot right through me
My heart skipped a beat in time
There’s a different feel about you tonight
It’s got me thinkin’ lots of crazy things
I even think I saw a flash of light
It felt like electricity
You shouldn’t kiss me like this
Unless you mean it like that
Cause I’ll just close my eyes
And I won’t know where I’m at
We’ll get lost on this dance floor
Spinnin’ around
And around
And around
And around
They’re all watchin’ us now
They think we’re falling in love
They’d never believed we’re just friends
When you kiss me like this
I think you mean it like that
If you do baby kiss me again
My version, “If I could have just one wish”:
My head spins, boy I’m reeling;
maybe its this bottle of wine.
My eyes burn I can’t see;
I’m sure that I’m not feeling fine.
Your skins burning like an amber light;
a fire deep inside me begins.
I wonder when your eyes grew bright
wonder at simplicity.
If I could have just one wish
I’d hold you right where we sat
Never say my goodbyes
it’d be as easy as that.
In your arms like before
our love sound
so sound
so sound
so sound
We’d never have this row
we’d rise high above
in my dreams this never ends
if I had just one wish
we’d stay right where we once sat
What would you baby do with me then?
You really have to listen to the lyrics to get the full affect of these songs and rhymes. I love the opportunity to really listen to music. So often I have it playing in the background but I tune the words out while I work. It makes me forget how truly beautiful the lyrics can be sometimes. I’ll have to make an effort to listen to the words more often.
Original: So Lonesome I Could Cry by Hank Williams
My version: We Said Our Last Goodbye
http://joycefied.wordpress.com/2010/04/11/we-said-our-last-good-bye-a-rock-and-rhyme-poem/
Standing on a lonely hill
Beneath a cloudy sky
He always thought our love would grow
Before we said our last good bye.
.
Didn’t know just what he did wrong
Never got to ask me why
Why must I be so doggone proud
To make us say good bye
.
Will I ever get a full night’s sleep
When clouds roll through the sky
For I never learned how to forgive
When we said our last good bye.
.
I always wonder from afar
Let out a mournful sigh
As I wish upon a star
After we said our last good bye.
This is excellent! You’ve done a great job using imagery and storytelling in recreating the lyrics to this classic tune. Nice work!
I love this concept. I’m a habitual rhymer and often there’s a tune playing in my head when I write something down.
So I’ll give it a whirl with Paul McCartney [I Want to Hold Your Hand].
============================================
MY SILLY VERSION
Oh say, can you see me
I’m waving both my hands
Descend the plane so gently
Here is the place to land
Here is the place to land
Here is the place to land
I hope you see my signal
Alone upon the sand
And please do not kill me
As you attempt to land
Here is the place to land
Right here upon the sand
And when I spot you I get nervous and cry
It’s such a worry
Oh my nerves
I might die
I might die
I might die
Thank God you saw my signal
As you approached the sand
Thankfully you did not crush me
In your attempt to land
You found the place to land
Right here upon the sand
As I read this, I kept thinking about some person on an island with a plane flying overhead and trying to land. Interesting concept. You did a good job staying in tune with the rhythm of the Beatles song!