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How to Write Euphonically          How to Write Euphonically
            By Nic Swaner

          Warning: This tutorial is half-learned and half-self-taught. I may use improper terms and techniques that I have found that just work (for me). If you study phonaesthetics, feel free to correct me.

          More and more I see young writers try their hand at poetry and prose, and what follows is a seemingness to forget and forego the artistic side of writing. While y

Character Motivation

Everyone's heard that characters should have goals, something they want and must strive for, overcoming obstacles and antagonists in order to obtain. Because, well, a story is the record of your character's journey toward achieving a goal.

While all of this is true, I think a lot of writers lose sight of an even more important aspect of character. That is, motivation. Sure, you know what your character wants.

Why?

That's the gist of motivation. What is the psychology and reasoning behind your character's goal? If your character is driven to make money, is his motivation greed? To pay off a debt? To support his family?

Motivation is your c

Six word storyDelightful nonsense doesn't change the truth.

He Gave Me A RoseHe gave me a rose;
It represented our eternal love,
until it wilted three days later.

When you asked me what I wanted
I told you anything but flowers.
The rose is a hypocrite:
not at all profound
and even less prolific.
So, you got me a rose
made of glass, and
we laughed together
as I placed it on a shelf.

There it collected dust,
until it was toppled by
the tiniest jolt.
I gingerly collected the pieces
of fractured romance,
while you cajoled me with
it doesn't matter.

One day you gave me
a diamond, cut to look like
a white rose (of sympathy).
I kept it, but
I never got you back.

Oh, Ed: I am not Your Annabel Lee AnymoreYou have learned to move
with the silence of ghosts,
the tense noiselessness
of bricked-up walls
—shut out the night, and
shut out the night.

I, too, have changed.
I am a mausoleum,
my darling Poe—
you curl up inside me like a child.

But there is hardly anything left to hold;
all that is left of me
is a house of moth-eaten lace,
green as arsenic,
collapsing amidst purple lightning flowers,

falling wingless over cliffs
that crash like waves against a dark sea.

CamelliasThe carcasses
of pink camellia blossoms
litter the sidewalk,
a school of tropical fish
escaped from their captors' net
and gasping
for air.

I wait for them to rise
into the sky,
a flock of bright angels,
fins turned toward the clouds.

They will bloom again tomorrow,
this I know.

Tips for the Messy WriterWhen the Muse Strikes
I don't know about you, but most of my ideas for writing come to me in the shower. There I'll be, rinsing the shampoo from my hair, and suddenly a line flits through my head - a line so beautiful, so perfectly balanced between the universal and the personal that if I do not capture it immediately my muse will torment me with silence the rest of the year. Generally this situation ends with me haphazardly wrapped in a towel, running down the hall past the rest of the household - who have now learned to politely look the other way - to the dry erase board on the refrigerator where I can scribble out the thought before it evaporates into the ether.
If this is a situation familiar to you, then you may be what I call a messy writer. Messy writers are those for whom organization is not always advantageous, or even possible. This short guide offers five rules I've discovered help keep me on track once I've started a writing task. I hope you'll find them h

The Art of Refining Prose

The Art of Refining Prose

Many writers dread the editing process. Not only does it delay the showcase of prose, it can seem a tedious and painstaking task. Often, editing is more time-consuming than the initial writing and consequently, it is either ignored altogether or briefly indulged. This is a great shame. Sincere editing not only proves a pleasurable experience but invaluable to prose, as this is a wonderful opportunity to buff, polish and tighten the impact of one's writing.

Some might argue that editing is not only unnecessary, but detrimental to the “raw concept” of one’s inspiration. The answer to this is simple: se

sunday for a dayyour fingertips tap on
car leather to your
plain sunday tunes from
old speakers with the most
real rain sounds --
i can hear them on the windshield.
you know these days like i do, so
we shut our doors, shut sunday out and
leave the AC off
for sunday seeps
through.
we never have to explain why
we're never home these days, why
we're never anywhere, because
there's never anywhere to be but
nowhere for a day.

Hunger-Second VersionFire in the wild isn't the color you think it is.

It's all amber and terra cotta,
one  great  roaring  tower  of
orange  like the Wrath of God
in a chestnut tree.

I can't go back again  to
Devil's Hollow, the small
rock - vale,   all   cinnamon
and nutmeg and dried pine
needles, where we used to
dance—-just  like so many
wolves old Nick will wait
for   my   return,   blazing
burnt sienna and shining,
all teeth.

I am not ready to give up
the ghost yet; I am still
waiting    for   an   excuse
to   travel    the    galaxy
empty-handed. I  want to
see those bronze  nebulas
gleamin

Nature's last green is gold.Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
- Robert Frost, 1923.

Nature's last green is gold:
the deepening of summer
into rich yellows, oranges, reds.
In our maturity, grown
comfortable with ourselves,
we stretch out, languid,
in the embrace of a hay field –
limbs entangled.
Our flowers are not the
delicate sort that die away
after spring's first flurry;
they are smaller, less showy,
but sure of themselves
and hardy.

Indeed, the honeyed scents of a
ripened earth ar

Bruises and InfidelityYour lipstick bruised his cheek,
It was still there when they found him lying face up,
So they asked me what shade I wore and I told them I didn't,
That's why he said he loved me.

The bullet bruised his heart and
It was still there when I wiped my eyes with a borrowed
Handkerchief and watched them lower him down with a little effort.
You threw down some dirt.

Your hand bruised my chest when you
Threw me against the wall and warned me not to pry.
Strong for a little woman, and beautiful. You told me he would not be dead
If I had been just a little more exciting.

They washed your lipstick bruise away, like
They deleted his nam

The Unsung SongThe words lie frozen in the wind,
Like scattered dust of ages past,
Whispering songs never sung,
Before the old moon waned.

My poetic script lays dying,
As the red sun fades again,
To an eternal twilight,
Ever hopeless for dawn's rebirth.

Voiceless is my message,
Which falls upon deaf hearts,
So though my song is unending,
It will no longer play for you.

CecileI want to feel your
Skin
I want to excavate what you hide within
Your soul, behind
The wall that stands between
What I am and what I want to be
What you want me to be
What they want me to see
Oh-

I want to feel your

Bones

B
Oh
nes
Tracing every mark of the scaffolding that keeps you
Upright
Ali-ive
Insi
ide
Your fragile breaking point when you begin
To fall
Apart
I want to know if I can fix you
I want to play you like a melody, and I can't even bring
Myself to see
When You Blind Me

I'm blinded

I want to feel your
Cells and nerves on fire
I WANT your vessels to lift you high-er
I want your lungs breathing me in
I WANT your heart and your

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Though Afraid of Wolves I Seek Your Forest Hearti. My mother used to say
if you’re afraid of wolves, don’t go into the woods.
I never listened. I used to imagine
my blue winter-fingers through your hair—
a pack of wolves through the trees,
hungry and searching.

ii. These days I tend toward a kind of prophecy for my mental health.
I miss when you used to read the future for me.
I found the slow deliberateness
of your fingertips along the turquoise backs of my cards
soothing.

iii. I have begun to learn a new language
so that our hearts might speak directly to each other,
ventricle to ventricle, as they did once on my blue bedspread
(but not as I’d have liked them to

StarЗвезда

i. I was still, once;
a rock amidst constellations that
flapped like birds.

Their spinning gravity wells
have strung me—
a glittering necklace of asteroids.

Madness is only a quiet hunger for those
who do not live within the skull
that is being broken apart by too many stars.

ii.
as a fox kit i will wander ice white russian forests in winter hoping to be taken in
longing for bright red curls but silver furred and searching hungry for the mice beneath the snow
ringed round with chicken wire and caught amongst the hens wishing for the
russet hair that would blend me in

if i were catheri

December Buddha IIDecember cracks open like hazelnuts,
browned and dried from the November fires,
and brings with it the reminder to
live the forest that I am:
smoky and sprinkled with sage.

North Carolina Decembers are sunny enough—
they long for a quiet buddha-winter,
white and soft,
for someone to remind them that life
does not end with the New Year,
that time is a hazelnut, curling in on itself.
That it is my roots, a twining forest network
going on forever.

In the spring, I am not the forest fire.
I want a stream for floating hazelnuts
and will answer all your riddles with my cryptic
sage-answer: "time, time, time."

But I am no rain-bu

So you want to join the dA lit community? Part IGreetings, all! WELCOME TO DEVIANTART! I'm so excited to welcome you to a community I have been a member of for going-on 8 years. I started this
tutorial specifically because I know the literature community is difficult to find, so I wanted to create a kind of quick reference guide for writers who have just joined dA (or returned to it after a long haitus) to let people know how things work, where to go for critique, contests, help, DD suggestions, or just friendly conversation!
In this guide, I would like to talk about how to submit literature, critiques, Daily Deviations, people you should know, the literature forum, and groups.
This tutorial began life as a single article. About halfway through the first section, I realized there was no way I could fit all the information that I think is important for new members to know into a single guide without creating an impossibly-long article. So, I'll be including links to the other parts of this tutorial in the comments section at the bott

Myself, For MountainsThe Blue Mountains
have never worn their colour so well—
on their backs
I may lie down and feel
the pressing of ground against sky
and realise I ride their wingbones,
realise I witness the slow birth of new
Thunderbirds.

I breathe on wingbeats,
fill the cæsuras in the earth's phrases
with a strange music,
learn to see the hills and mountainscapes
as they are. I consult them
like tea leaves, become a flute
destined for their lips alone.

In winter, the way the tree-strands
along their tops look like lace:
old Grandfather Mountain
becomes his widow, doily-shrouded and mourning.
My songs, by spring, will bring the birds back to

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Writing Poetry, Tutorial 1by =AzizrianDaoXrak

Resources & Stock Images / Tutorials / Writing

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! My first ever tutorial!!!

I'm actually sort of excited about this. I've done a bunch of critiques for people lately that I realized pretty much just covered the basics of poetry-writing (to my mind, anyway). So I thought it would be a good idea to put together a tutorial for writing poetry. This tutorial is specifically written for BEGINNERS!

To all the more advanced poets out there: I'd love to hear your thoughts on my presentation/the topics I've chosen. I'd like to do more of these, but for now I thought I'd stick to things that I think are really important to learning how to write poetry.

Also, this has been edited for typos and spelling/grammar mistakes by MORE THAN ME. However, if you happen to see any, please tell me >_< Considering I mention that, it would be a bit embarrassing to have one myself, lol

Sections:
1. Spelling and Grammar (please note you can access the link I have posted in this section >here<)
2. Picking a topic
3. Imagery
4. Enjambment
5. Moving Forward

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*beeinthebottle Nov 8, 2012 Writer

To my understanding -- enjambment is when a line (that is, a "sentence") carries over to the next line. The opposite of enjambment, not surprisingly, is a line that is "end stopped," or ends with a period or other similar punctuation. Enjambment is not simply a line break.

Beyond that, I thought this was a great synopsis of how to write poetry. Great work!

=AzizrianDaoXrak Nov 8, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

CRAP I can't believe I swapped the definition around. I'll have to remember to go in and fix that. Ugh, HUGE mistake >_<

=LadyofGaerdon Sep 15, 2011 Professional Writer

This is a great guide. I don't really have many improvement suggestions. I think you should put that link in your artist comments though, since you can't actually click on it in the deviation itself.

Yay for weird grammar!

Where you suggested haiku and sonnets, etc. maybe you can suggest couplets, too? Those are pretty basic.

This sentence was a little unclear:

"For melancholy pieces, take something happy or neutral and put a spin on it- make it fierce and raw." - Melancholy and fierce are rather different...

=AzizrianDaoXrak Sep 15, 2011 Hobbyist Writer

Valid critique of that sentence. I think I had too many ideas about that one, haha.

And yes, duh, couplets >_<

=LadyofGaerdon Sep 15, 2011 Professional Writer

~angeljunkie Sep 15, 2011 Student Writer

In the top bit, pretty much the first paragraph, there's some odd wording:

In the case of the difference between poetry and prose, there is really a spectrum: you can really tell what poetry is on the one hand, and what prose is on the other, but there are things in the middle that can get really sort of muddled.

1. It sounds odd having 'really' in between 'is' and 'a' - there really is a spectrum. 2. You have 'really' in one sentence 3 times. 3. This sentence essentially says what the following about Joyce does, except the second one works better.

In the section on imagery, you have a little side thing in bold, that stops mid-sentence.
My discussion of imagery is pretty much going to center on the ideas of "theme" and "focus" that I mentioned in

Other than that, at times I found the splotchy things in the background a bit difficult because they obscure the text a little. I think you've got a decent basis for someone to go on here. It's difficult doing tutorials like these, though, because there are so many different ideas on where to start and how to proceed, and a lot of it is somewhat subjective (like a beginning visual artist can be told to draw and apple until it looks like an apple, but with poets...).

My poetry tutor last year had a similar idea about starting with free verse. She basically said we wouldn't be able to do traditional forms well, so she wasn't going to waste her time teaching them. Lovely, no? Anyway. I know there is that thought, about starting beginners out with free verse because it's easier, but like =angelStained I started out with rhyming/traditional, and I think those forms are helpful in the beginning. Rhyming and traditional forms have a very fixed formula which requires the poet to think about the words they're choosing and place them in a very deliberate order. Verbal training wheels, maybe? Anyway. That would be my suggestion for any beginner writer - but especially poets - study the traditional forms, then explore your own style. As you said, you have to know the rules before you can break them, and free verse is, essentially, breaking all the rules of poetry.

=AzizrianDaoXrak Sep 15, 2011 Hobbyist Writer

OH NOES! I'm so embarrassed I didn't catch all those "really"s >_<

I will definitely fix that. I also see what both you AND angelstained mean about starting with free verse. I was trying to make a suggestion based on a lot of the beginning poets I've seen who really limit themselves so much by trying to write with rhymes and end up with 3 syllable lines with no room for...anything, really. And I definitely was one of those who learned to write poetry with free verse, lol, so I'll admit to being biased in that respect.

Perhaps I'll just edit that section to say, "I RECOMMEND this because it worked for me, but if you find you need more structure, check out some of these forms...."

Sound good?

~angeljunkie Sep 15, 2011 Student Writer

=angelStained Sep 14, 2011 Writer

There are some bits that can be... controversial eg. "always start with free verse". I started with rhyming poetry and I didn't turn out too bad. Free verse may be too unrestrictive for a beginner to try. And the tone can get a little condescending, although it won't affect much.

=AzizrianDaoXrak Sep 15, 2011 Hobbyist Writer

Yeah, I tried to phrase it as, "I RECOMMEND starting with free verse." Are there any particular parts that sound condescending to you? I was trying to keep it light and conversational, but there were some points in there where I felt like common errors needed addressing.

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