Guest: Pamela Donison
Whether we’re novelists or short story writers, we’ve probably experienced the irony of how longer writing—such as our story—can sometimes be easier to write than something shorter, like a synopsis, query, Twitter pitch, or log line. The shorter we go, the more every word counts.
That’s why authors often turn to the skills important in poetry to strengthen our writing. In poetry, every word counts for rhythm, imagery, rhyming, etc., so poetry techniques can teach us a lot about how to improve our prose—word by word, line by line.
We might pay attention to the rhythm of our words, or we might play with paragraph breaks—the prose version of “lining out” a poem. We might try to add more similes or metaphors or imagery, or we might dig into rhetorical devices.
But there’s another poetry technique we can add to our writing craft toolbox that we might not have thought of before. Pamela Donison, who offers writing retreats and mentoring for sparking creativity, is another one of the awesome guest posters filling in for me during NaNoWriMo, and she’s going to teach us how to apply poetry skills to our prose writing.
Please welcome Pamela Donison! *smile*
Embroidering Your Prose Through Haiku
by Pamela Donison
Have you ever read something that was just okay, but didn’t really sing on the page? A sentence or paragraph (or a whole book?) that lacked the magic your reader’s mind was seeking?
You can avoid the lackluster reporting of events by “embroidering” your scenes with evocative imagery, applied with a spare hand and discerning eye. This is a perfect exercise for including sensory details that pull your reader into the scene, while leaving room for their imagination to fill in the rest of the picture.
Add Sensory Details with Techniques from Poetry
One of my passions is helping writers conjure that magic on the page via my creative writing retreats, where I help professional women discover the joy of writing something other than another memo. To get into the groove of creative writing, I use a meditative haiku exercise I learned from John Paul Lederach, American Professor of International Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame.
Once we’ve created haiku, I teach writers how to extract the imagery to embellish their prose. You can use this powerful exercise any time you need fresh inspiration to “embroider” sensory details onto your work.
7 Steps to Using Haiku Techniques in Our Prose
Step One: Learn the Rules of Haiku
As a reminder, haiku follows a strict 5/7/5 syllable format and, traditionally, was a sensory description of the natural world, often seasonal.
Here are three examples of haiku from Basho Matsuo (1644-1694), considered to be the greatest haiku poet:
An old silent pond…
A frog jumps into the pond,
splash! Silence again.
A frog jumps into the pond,
splash! Silence again.
Autumn moonlight—
a worm digs silently
into the chestnut.
a worm digs silently
into the chestnut.
In the twilight rain
these brilliant-hued hibiscus –
A lovely sunset.
these brilliant-hued hibiscus –
A lovely sunset.
For some gorgeous examples of haiku, you can visit the archives of the Haiku Society of America (yep, that’s a thing!). READ MORE.
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