Rhyme or Reason
How to Write Rhyme
“Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!” -Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel)
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five-pound note. -Edward Lear
Have you ever read something by Dr. Seuss or Edward Lear or another master of rhyme and wished you could create something close to as clever/amazing? Well, I’m here to tell you that you too can be a master of rhyme. You just need a little knowledge and a lot of practice, and soon you’ll be churning out rhymes too.
First, make sure you know the basics of how to write a poem. Then, your next step is to master rhythm. Rhyme is a close cousin to rhythm, and rhyming verse needs a strong rhythm to carry it. Once you’ve got that under your belt, you’re ready to learn how to rhyme.
The most basic rhymes are one-syllable pairs of words that end with the same sound: bee/knee, boat/note, you/true. You get the idea. Start there. If you need some help finding words that rhyme, my favourite resource is RhymeZone. I use this site for nearly every rhyming poem I write.
Two-syllable words can can rhyme too, but sound different depending on where the stress falls in the word. If the stress is on the second/last syllable (da-DUM), it is a masculine (or iambic)ending, and if the stress is on the first syllable (DUM-da), it is a feminine (or trochaic)ending. An example of a pair of rhyming words with masculine (or iambic) endings is giraffe/carafe. An example of a pair with feminine (or trochaic) endings is honey/money. And yes, the terms masculine and feminine can be seen as problematic and/or sexist. You can say iambic and trochaic instead if you want.
You can of course mix it up and rhyme ‘money’ with ‘sea’ as Lear does in “The Owl and the Pussycat,” but be careful doing this as it can sound odd to the ear sometimes. Always read it aloud if you are unsure.
All the rhymes I’ve mentioned so far are “perfect rhymes” where the ending sound is exactly the same in both words. Perfect rhymes are usually what we first think of when we think of rhymes. However, there are many other ways to rhyme.
I really like to use “near rhymes.” This is when the endings of a pair of words sound similar, but not exactly the same. For example, chubby/buddy or face/dates. Wikipedia also calls these “weak” or “forced rhymes.”
Try to avoid rhyming a word with itself. It often looks amateur. However, you can use homophones to create “identical rhymes.” This should not be overused, but can create a humorous effect. Eg: bear/bare or wait/weight.
Sight rhymes (also called “eye rhymes”) can be fun when looking at the poem on the page, but can easily make it difficult to read aloud. Read aloud the lines “A brief but patient illness,/An hour to prepare,/And one below this morning/Is where the angels are (Emily Dickinson).” The words ‘prepare’ and ‘are’ do not actually rhyme but look as if they should. I find my tongue stumbling when I read these lines aloud.
The word pair move/love is in my opinion an example of both a near rhyme and a sight rhyme, so it flows much better than most sight rhymes when read aloud. This is great, as “love” has so few perfect rhymes (please please don’t use the word “glove” in a love poem /shudder).
When talking or writing about rhyme, we usually use lowercase letters to indicate rhymes. Two words that rhyme take the same letter in the explication. For a rhyming couplet (2 lines that rhyme with each other), we would use aa. For a ballad poem (four line stanzas where alternate lines rhyme), we would use abab. If we have 6 lines that rhyme alternately, we would use abcabc. In a 16 line poem like a sonnet, we get much further into the alphabet. An English sonnet would be abab cdcd efef gg.
Never forget that you don’t have to rhyme. And sometimes, if you start out rhyming, then end on a word that doesn’t rhyme, that can be powerful too. And never force a rhyme. If you choose a word simply because it rhymes, that will be obvious to your readers, and it will look like you don’t know what you’re doing. Remember even if you don’t know what you’re doing, you want the reader to think you do.
If you want to craft great rhyming poetry, use RhymeZone or a rhyming dictionary of your choice; utilize near rhymes and alliteration, assonance, and consonance; and never forget that your meaning is more important than rhyming. The perfect word is not always a perfect rhyme.
