The Incendiary Lit Heroic Crown Affair continues! Day 6.
By now most of you will be ready to coast through your next sonnet. You still have many different opening/final lines to choose from (everyone made a chart with all the sonnet’s opening and closing lines right? Since you have them already in Sonnet 15. I’ll try to make a sample word doc and upload it today, if I can figure out the stupid ftp thingy, which obviously means that it’s not I who is stupid… it’s the ftp thingamajigger). Things are sunny in Heroic Crownville.
There will inevitably be harder times to come, when the odd matchings of first/last lines confuse your subject a little. If you have any odd pairings, start thinking about how they can work together. Because they can, but it may require some non-traditional storytelling… But have faith. Even if you have to write one stinker in this bunch, that’s what the last couple days of the ILHCA are designated to help with. But get thinking on the various subjects, even if you don’t write anything down.
For those having trouble rhyming/with the form- write a free verse ‘base’ poem as described in Day 5. If you have the free verse poem already written, let’s work on shaping it. Look at the words towards the end of the line (or beginning of the next line) that really mean something- ie verbs, nouns, and adjectives for the most part. You can generally reword something to get that word at the end of the line without screwing up the syntax like a bad sonneteer or adding too many nothing words. Either check your internal rhyming dictionary, or RhymeZone and see if any of those rhymes or near rhymes can be worked into the necessary line without stilting it or sounding wrong. If that doesn’t work, look for synonyms for the nearest ’something’ word and check for rhymes for promising leads. If it still isn’t working, set the poem aside, and using the first/last line template re-write the poem without looking at it. Don’t necessarily try to make it exact, just try to write essentially the same poem without looking at it, improving anywhere you see fit. There will very likely be slight rewordings and even total rearrangements that may open doors for reworking the poem into the sonnet form.