Rhyming Tips: Use Your Thesaurus!

by Cynthia Light Brown

One of my favorite things to do is to come up with a rhyme that is a clever play on words, or is an unusual rhyme. I find a rhyming dictionary crucial for finding those unusual rhymes I wouldn’t think of by myself. But the tool that’s even more important is a thesaurus.

That’s because when I’m rhyming, I have to shuffle. Or maybe juggle. I have an idea I want to get across, or maybe a plot point in a story. I start with an interesting word, and try to rhyme it. Usually, there isn’t a good rhyme, so I have to try to rhyme another word that means the same thing; hence the thesaurus. Of course, when I change one line, I might have to scrap another. So it’s like juggling lots of balls at once. Or maybe I’m shuffling them around (and whether to use the word juggle or shuffle would depend on what rhymes with them).

The following rhyme was in one of my nonfiction books, The Geology of the Pacific Northwest.

I wanted a fun rhyme about plankton that could include any of the following that I had discussed in more detail in the text: they’re very small; includes both phytoplankton and zooplankton; they’re the basis of the entire oceanic food chain; they float around aimlessly; they live near the surface so the phytoplankton can photosynthesize; the larger plankton eat the smaller plankton; they’re also eaten by larger animals; when they die they sink to the bottom of the ocean and can eventually be covered by sediments to form oil; they can cause algal blooms; etc. etc.

I tried rhyming float and aim. Neither worked. What’s like float? Move from place to place? Not working either. Suspend? Nope. But drift was interesting because of swift.

Lots of other ideas were dead ends, such as food chain or food web, as well as size (microscopic, small, etc. although tiny had possibilities because of briny). I tried rhyming with all kinds of creatures that eat plankton, and anemone turned out nicely. Sometimes, I get a nice pair of words that rhyme and relate to plankton – like tiny and briny – but it just doesn’t work in with the entire piece, so I have to kill it.

One of my favorite words associated with plankton is “diatom ooze.” It’s scientific, but it’s also fun to say. Rhyming it was tough. Booze? Maybe not. Snooze? Lose? Maybe; I played around with that for an hour or so. Cruise had possibilities. But "choose" somehow clicked with the two possible fates of plankton. And that clinched the whole thing.

Plankton

We twirl and swirl,

We float and drift.

In getting around,

We’re not too swift.

Which makes us prey

For the anemone

And whales and fish and…

The whole dang sea.

They gobble and gulp us;

We’re an easy mark.

And if they should miss,

We sink to the dark.

Now tell us straight.

What would you choose?

The belly of a whale,

Or a diatom ooze?

© Cynthia Light Brown

The Sagging Middle

This picture was done by Seth Patrick, who also designed our logo.

Seth's a great artist and illustrator. Check out his website at
sethpatrick.com

I had a birthday recently. It was one of those big ones with a zero at the end that no one will let you quietly ignore, and it was a “middle” birthday. A big fat 50 middle. I’m doing that mid-life thingy where you contemplate the sagginess of your life and try to resist the urge to do anything drastic, like sky-diving or starting a pig farm.

I’m also the mother of three children, which means I have a middle that is most definitely sagging. If you look at my profile picture, or my skinny-skinny chicken legs, you’d think there’s no way I have a sagging middle. But there it is. And if I put on 5 pounds tomorrow eating too much mashed potatoes, 4.999 pounds of it will go to my saggy-baggy middle.

I’m also working on a novel, and I’m – you guessed it – in the middle. Desperately trying to keep it from sagging. The opening chapters were fun to write (and re-write and re-write) and I’m oh-so-excited about the climax. But that darn middle, where I have to somehow push readers from point A to point B.

Therein lies the crux of the matter – all too often we writers think of the middle as simply getting from point A to point B, to just get it over with. But that’s sort of like thinking that when you climb a mountain, all you’re trying to do is get to the top. If all you’re trying to do is get to point B, you’re missing the Point. The middle has a purpose; it’s where the main events happen, where we truly get to know the characters and their motivations and relationships and secrets, and where the central questions of the novel are explored and complicated.

So, what to do about a sagging middle? Here’s a checklist that I keep in the back of my mind, and then use after the whole gloppy mess is drafted. And after it’s revised. And after it’s revised again, and again, and again…until it isn’t gloppy.

1. Raise the stakes. Especially the emotional stakes. You raise the stakes by throwing your main character into worse and worse situations. You raise the emotional stakes by making a greater and greater disconnect between what the MC wants, and all the things you’re throwing at him/her that keep the MC from getting what he/she wants. If it really matters to the MC, it will really matter to your readers.

2. Have a memorable plot structure. By this, I mean that the events that drive the story forward are distinct and stand out to the reader. Distinctness can come from a unique setting, or something drastic or hilarious that happens. Have you ever read a book that is beautifully written and perhaps even has well developed characters, but you just can’t remember what happens in most of the book? Not good. If in doubt, push the edges, make a zany supporting character even zanier, make a dead body show up stuffed into one of the giant washing machines at the laundromat. Make your reader gasp. If they gasp, they will remember. Alternatively, making them pee in their pants from laughing will work too.

3. Reveal secrets. Don’t save all your twists until the end. This advice is not just for murder mysteries. It’s for all mysteries, which means it’s for all stories, because all stories at their heart are mysteries.

4. Have multiple paths, but no dead ends. You don’t want a simple, straight plot to get to the end. Those twisting paths that run alongside the main path – called subplots – add intrigue and depth. They often involve relationships. But don’t let yourself wander off onto a dead end – a path that doesn’t advance the plot. To do this, you want most of your scenes doing double or triple duty. For example, a relationship takes a twist as a result of something external happening in the story.

5. Do NOT NOT NOT do a long backstory dump. You may want to give us, the readers, a long explanation of things that happened before the novel started, but we don’t want to read it. At least not all at once. It’s tempting after an action-packed beginning to settle into long exposition. Don’t do it.

6. Have mini-arcs in your chapters. Each of your chapters should have its own arc, where tension builds through the chapter towards a climax. All of these arcs within chapters have to contribute towards the main story arc. After a chapter climax, give readers a VERY short breather. Like climbing a mountain, if you take very short stops to catch your breath, you can go even higher. But if you stop for a nap, forget it. Your reader will not tolerate a nap.

7. Cut out the fat. Be ruthless about trimming out excess words, sentences, scenes. Trimming fat can also help on the other kind of sagging middle too.

8. Raise the stakes. Hmm, I think I already said that. Must be repeating myself here in my middle years (which you should not do in your novel middle). But it bears repeating: RAISE THE STAKES!

I’m going to go slump down into our giant beanbag chair, eat some sag-inducing chocolate, and dream about pigs jumping out of airplanes with little parachutes attached (no worries, no pigs will be harmed in my dream). I’m quite content with much of the sagginess in my life. Just not in my novels.

Need Something to entertain the kids on Thanksgiving? Here’s some very saggy, very fun stuff to make with them. I love oobleck. This works best if you’re going to someone else’s house for Thanksgiving, and you’re doing it with someone else’s kids. It’s from my bookAmazing Kitchen Chemistry Projects You Can Build Yourself.

Happy Thanksgiving!