Jennifer Berne's Tips on Writing RHyming nonfiction

Writing a picture book on a complex nonfiction topic can seem like a monumental task. Adding rhyme? That can feel downright formidable. Today's guest blogger, Jennifer Berne, is here to assure you that it can be done... and done well!  In HOW THE SEA CAME TO BE (AND ALL THE CREATURES IN IT), illustrated by Amanda Hall, author Jennifer Berne tackles a vast topic: the entire history of the sea! She does so in an accessible and entertaining way, using rhyming verse. Here are Jennifer's top tips for writing picture books in rhyming verse. 

​1. Write it in prose first.
You have a book idea you like. Perhaps you have a folder of notes and research. And you know you want it to be in rhyming verse. So now it’s time to start writing. In prose.

Like the skeleton of your body, the blueprint for your house, your prose draft is what everything to come will be built upon. This is the time to structure your manuscript. To arrange and rearrange. To perfect your idea, to refine and edit the flow of your storyline. To make sure it is all interesting, strong and compelling. If it isn’t good in prose, chances are it won’t be much better in verse.

​Your prose version allows you to assess your story clearly, without the distractions of meter and rhyme. It’s how you make sure upfront that the end result will be a book worth writing. Your story has to be great before it’s turned into poetry. And if you love what you wrote in prose, you can feel positive about what you’re about to compose in rhyme.

2. Dive into the poetry.
Now that your prose draft is just right, it’s time to have fun. To play, to get creative and inventive, to use all the tools of poetic lyrical writing that you have at your disposal. By experimenting, you will find the ideal structure, meter, and rhyme scheme for your story. You may even find it in some of the phrases of your prose version.

You can play with end rhymes and internal rhymes, alliteration, assonance, simile and metaphor, imagery and musicality, onomatopoeia, drama, humor, and so much more to enrich and enhance the telling of your tale. For instance, in HOW THE SEA CAME TO BE, I used alliteration, assonance, internal rhyme and end rhyme in this stanza that describes the hot, early, dynamic planet Earth. (Check out the Rhyme Doctors' POETRY PRESCRIPTIONS posts for more information on some of the poetic devices mentioned in this post.) 

Earth sizzled and simmered for millions of years.
It bubbled and burbled and hissed.
It raged and it rumbled, it thundered and boiled,
spewing lava and steamy hot mist. 

​From this spread…

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​In this next stanza I used internal rhyme, imagery, metaphor, and alliteration to paint a verbal picture of the jellyfish in Earth’s early oceans.

There were round jellyfish that drifted and squished
as they moved with a watery sigh,
trailing tentacle threads that would stick and would sting
​and would capture the food floating by. 

From this spread...

​In the following stanza, I used alliteration, assonance, and a bit of humor to talk about the front-to-back structure that evolved in one of our early marine ancestors:
​
So to the sea came a new shape of life.
The form that it took was a worm,
with a head in the front and a tail in the back
and between--in the middle--a squirm.  

From this spread...

Even a list can be musical, lyrical and fun to read aloud, as in this stanza where I wanted to point out the incredible biodiversity of today’s oceans:

See the catfish and cowfish and lampreys and clams,
puffy blowfish and bluefish and sails.
Spiny lobsters and starfish and scallops and shrimp,
speedy sailfish and huge spouting whales. 

​So, go ahead and launch into the creative fun and rewarding results of writing poetic, lyrical rhyming verse.

3. Make sure rhyme is your partner, not your dictator!
Rhyme can be like a partner and a great inspiration, by offering and suggesting words to you. It can open doors to ideas, images and concepts you might never have thought of without rhyme as your collaborator. But be cautious! Don’t let rhyme waylay you, shift your focus, or divert the direction of your storyline away from what you really want to be saying. Just because a word or phrase rhymes and seems clever doesn’t mean it’s right.

4. Write, write, write. Edit, edit, edit.
Of course you know this, but it’s worth repeating. No matter what your manuscript — poetry or prose, fiction or nonfiction— nothing yields more rewards than rewriting and reediting. Over and over and over, until you love every part of what you’ve created — every thought, every sentence, every phrase, every word. And then your manuscript is ready to go out into the world to get published.

Jennifer Berne is the award-winning author of over a dozen picture books, including MANFISH about Jacques Cousteau, ON A BEAM OF LIGHT an Einstein bio, ON WINGS OF WORDS about Emily Dickinson, and more. Jennifer lives in a house she designed in the rolling hills of Columbia County NY, and spends her summers sailing the Maine coast with her artist husband. She writes wherever she goes, land or sea. You can find more about Jennifer on her website www.jenniferberne.com