In a post on Writers in the Storm, Ellen Buikema offers tips for elevating your prose to the level of poetry. “This writing, poetic prose, is a combination of sound, rhythm, and sense imagery that pierces the heart,” she writes.
One important way – and something most writers overlook – is rhythm. “Sentence length, internal rhymes, syllables, assonance, and alliteration all affect rhythm,” Buikema says. “The sentence length and the number of syllables can vary the way a reader paces a paragraph or stanza in their mind.” Longer sentences create a sense of flowing peacefulness, while short, choppy sentences create sense of urgency or danger.
Other poetic devices include alliteration, assonance, and internal rhymes. Alliteration is the use of the same consonant sounds in consecutive words or syllables at the beginning of a word. Note how many Marvel super-heroes have alliterative names: Peter Parker, Bruce Banner, Matt Murdoch, Reed Richards. You’ll also find this in the corporate world and pop culture: Best Buy, Door Dash, Krispy Kreme, House Hunters, Big Bang Theory.
With assonance, the writers repeats similar vowel sounds in two or more words that are adjacent to each other in a line of writing. Common examples include son of a gun, dumb luck, chips and dip, and eyes on the prize.
Internal rhythms also help the write control pacing and mood. You might think feet and stresses are limited to poetry, but many writers use poetic rhythms without their readers realizing it.
