Wednesday Writing Workout: Rhyming Nonfiction

Kids (and grown-ups) love to write in rhyme, but it’s a lot harder than it looks. And it gets even tougher if you’re trying to write nonfiction in rhyme! So, here's an exercise for those interested in writing rhyming picture books. This could also be a fun classroom activity where you ask students to synthesize information learned in a particular math or science or history unit. (I wouldn’t even attempt something like this with students younger than 5th grade, though, and even then, working as a group will be a lot more successful.)

1. Pick a topic you want to write a short poem about. I think I’ll do, um, fences. Yup, fences. Pick something you’ve never written about and don’t actually want to write a whole poem or picture book about. That will make this less stressful!

2. Define your topic in a first line. That’s a place to start. m-w.com tells me a fence is “a structure like a wall built outdoors usually of wood or metal that separates two areas or prevents people or animals from entering or leaving.” OK, I’m going to start with:

A fence is like an outside wall

Because it ends in wall (and, yes, I purposely picked a simplish word that I know will have rhyming possibilities to end the line with), I’m going to brainstorm and/or look up on rhymezone.com words that rhyme with wall that might in some way work into this poem: all, ball, crawl, fall, tall,

3. Add detail in rhyming line.

A fence is like an outside wall:
Wood or metal, short or tall.

4. Decide what else you want to tell about your topic. I like the idea that fences sometimes keep people or things or animals IN, and sometimes keep people or things or animals OUT. So that’s what I want my second half of this poem to convey. In and out are the main elements of that concept, so I’ll check out some rhyme possibilities and see where that leads me:

in – bin, grin, skin, twin, win
out – about, doubt, shout, trout

Well, those lead me pretty much nowhere, at least at first glance. Maybe I’ll try inside and outside, instead:

cried, died, tried, wide

Again, a big, fat nothing.

So, I switch gears. WHAT does it keep inside? Kids and dogs is what I’m mainly thinking of. And what does it keep outside? Strangers, people that might get hurt on whatever’s inside the fence...

While, I was thinking about that, the word divide popped into my head, which would rhyme with inside or outside. So I’m going to play with that.

5. Now try another couplet to show your concept.

A fence’s job is to divide.
A fence keeps beagles safe inside.

I don’t like that because it’s not clear. And the two lines don’t really connect. No cause or effect. Each line is true, but there’s no relationship between them. I’ll try again.

I think that second concept is too big for two short lines. I’m going to simplify to the concept that a fence keeps animals safe.

A fenced-in pasture, green and wide,
keeps grazing cattle safe inside.

6. Read over the four lines you wrote. Congratulations!

A fence is like an outside wall:
Wood or metal, short or tall.
A fenced-in pasture, green and wide,
keeps grazing cattle safe inside.

OK, mine is not going to win any prizes, but it’s a start! I have a basic definition, a bit of detail, and then a single example of one kind of fence and its job. In reading it, I see some possibilities for re-ordering and revising lines. So my second draft is:

Wood or metal, short or tall,
a fence becomes an outside wall.
Rolling meadow, green and wide,
cattle safely fenced inside.

Again, this is just very basic. But doing this exercise can help you build some rhyming/meaning muscles, so it's a great practice activity for any would-be rhymers!

Here are a couple of bits from my first draft of A River Can Be…, which eventually turned into Water Can Be…. You can see this process at work here. It’s just a combination of picking a word I KNOW works for the topic, brainstorming rhymes, and then trying out lines with those other rhymes to see which ones work both for rhyme AND for topic.

And when a word didn’t have enough rhymes to play with (like haven), I tried a synonym that was more rhyme-friendly. I hope you have fun trying your hand at a little bit of rhyme today!  
I'd love to see what you come up with! Feel free to share your four lines in the Comments!

Oh! And don't forget to enter our book giveaway of Water Can Be...! by clicking on the Rafflecopter widget in last Monday's post.

--Laura Purdie Salas