In Case of Inspiration Emergency: Devise Rules to Help Control the Fun

Whether you’re a planner or not, there’s one thing every writer will need as they prepare for NaNoWriMo: inspiration. We’ve challenged some of our favorite authors, and the NaNo staff to inspire you by sharing what’s inspired them… then issuing an inspiration dare:

The Contender: Dave Beck, NaNoWriMo Technical Director

The Inspiration Sources: 

The Divine Comedy , Dante Alighieri
“Jurass Finish First”, Jurassic Five

The Dare: Think of three structural challenges to whip out when the going gets, well… boring.

The Case Is Made: Ask the average person to write a poem and she will likely balk at the task. Ask her to write a haiku, however, and she often becomes a willing and creative participant…

Why the sudden change? A haiku is nothing more than a poem constrained by a rigorous set of rules. But the constraints are liberating. The terrifying void of “poem” becomes a breezy and engaging puzzle when one is limited to three lines and 17 syllables.

My favorite work of literature is also one of the most ambitious poems ever written. The Divine Comedy was written by the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri in the early 14th century. I often wonder how Dante had the nerve to attempt something so audacious: 14,233 deeply spiritual lines on the cosmology of the universe, the history of Western civilization, the nature of love, sin and death, the melodrama of current-day politics, and oh-by-the-way let’s standardize the Italian language while we’re at it. It’s absurdly oversized and sublimely beautiful.

To accomplish this Dante invented a new rhyme scheme called “terza rima”. Here are the constraints:

Each stanza has three lines;
The first and last lines rhyme with the middle line of the previous stanza,
The middle line seeds the following stanza.
Typically, each stanza is a complete sentence.

Dante scrupulously cleaves to this form from Hell to Heaven. Occasionally the poetic pyrotechnics become almost laughable as he moves and elides words to fit the meter and rhyme. (Dante was quite aware of his own talent, and acknowledges as much when the narrator —Dante himself — says he’s likely to spend the most time in the “pride” section of Purgatory.)

Not much is known about Dante’s process in writing the poem, but I believe that the poetic constraints actually fueled his creativity, forcing him to think of new phrases and metaphors to complete each stanza.

In the 21st century some of the most innovative structured writing is being done by rappers. In “Jurass Finish First” by Jurassic 5, each line rhymes twice with the previous line. The first few lines echo the “ass/erse” scheme of the song’s title:

Because of cash in the purse,

guns blast in the hearse,

a vast universe

when the last is the first.

The past been a curse,

I need some aspirin to nurse.

It’s your casket in earth,

or my ass when it hurts…

As the song progresses the rhymes drift and weave like a Bach fugue, finally resolving themselves where they began. It is the group’s most structured song, and (to my mind) its most interesting.

So when you get stuck writing that novel, here’s one thing to try: give yourself some helpful structure. Free your mind by erecting a few temporary fences. Stop writing a novel and write a chapter instead. (And if that doesn’t work write a paragraph.)

Still stuck? Try writing the whole chapter without using the same adjective twice, or without using the verb “to be.” Write the entire chapter in dialog. Begin each paragraph with the letter Q. Randomly pick words from the dictionary and work them into the story. When you go back to edit later, the gems you find may surprise you.

— Dave Beck