ANOTHER SONNET "HOW TO"

This exercise in sonnet combines the modern tendency in poems to show not tell with the old form. It asks you to first, be descriptive. Then work to learn the form.

Stop for a moment and picture a person you know well and let your mind's eye fill with as many descriptive details as you can. Picture that person in the place you think is most typical, dressed in a certain way, doing their most typical thing. Throw in as many sense details as you can including some phrases they might say if you spoke to them in the moment you picture them.

Write all that detail down in a good long descriptive paragraph. Again, write for the eye as much as you can. Paint their portrait in words.  

Then go back and divide the lines into about 20 syllables per line so you can see how long lines should look. Thereafter you would play with the lines to get the regular meter of five (5) equal "feet" which alternate  -  /  or unaccented then accented syllables. That is iambic pentameter. 

The last thing I think you could work at if you are working in this way, would be the rhyme. Most of us are pretty good making rhymes so that should come more easily. Only... don't kill the poem you wrote. The rhymes should flow.  You don't want to ruin good description and syntax to make the poem rhyme.

Hope this all helps! I'd be glad to see what you write. And p.s., just do the darn thing. In England they require kids in the third grade to write a sonnet. Short of sounding like a line from The Water Boy, "You can do it!"   David B. Axelrod