Working on my metre

[humility]

I don't plan to write poetry, I just write things for my D&D campaign. But there are a lot of skills in poetry that I think transfer well over to short stories which is basically what I write when I write stuff for my D&D campaign. Primarily Meter and the art of telling a lot of info in as few words as possible.

The following is my first attempt at metering some of my lore. I collapsed the lines into paragraphs and added proper transitional words . But my goal is that when I write my lore, that I can use poetic techniques to increase the readability better so one word flows into another. I basically want to learn meter. Maybe eventually I'll even try writing actual poems. Especially for stuff in the feywild proper as thats all supposed to be written in a mothergoose style poetry anyway.

But for now I'm focusing on improving my meter.

The Midnight Serpent sought to corrupt the offspring of a passed god so as to forge his own race using a power granted by Avandra the Maiden of Change. However the Spider Queen whispered into his ear secrets stolen from destiny that told of many heroes rising one by one to thwart his efforts. So he sought to kill these heroes whilst they were babes, But the machinations of fate are not thwarted easily and other heroes sprung forth to protect the destined champions.

Generations passed, heroes came then went and every attempt by the midnight serpent to craft his own race failed. In frustration he sought the counsel of  the mother of witches.  From her he learned a secret to thwarting fate. Within the fairy land, destiny holds little power and bonds between the fey and its natural counterpart are as strong as anything else forged at creation. One such bond exists between the wee folk and mortal man. An inextricable link, for a human child's first cries are always echoed by a young pixie's first laughter. And this cause and effect can be twisted. Thus the Midnight Serpent brewed a new poison, created from the tears of grieving parents and the empty dreams of the slumbering dead.  Within weeks after every conception that would one day give birth to a destined hero, The Master of Poisons found the flower bud that held the slumbering pixie waiting for new life's cry that would awaken her own laughter and joy. And so nine never bloomed and nine died in the womb, and the serpents curse upon man took root and soft flesh was hardened unto scale.
 

The nine poisoned pixie buds were made into wreath and given to the Mother of Witches as a gift of gratitude.  But the maiden of change was grieved and wracked by guilt at the fate she allowed to befall man. Seeking to repent in at least one small way Avandra went to the Mother of Witches. After paying an unknown price she held the Pixie Wreath in her hand and placed it in one of her temples until the day she could rescue them from their poisoned slumber.

I would show it to you uncollapsed and still looking like poetry but I changed it so much I'm not sure I could uncollapse it without effectively starting from scratch.

[Achebe]

Hmmm...I couldn't detect any cadences in what you wrote, for instance:

I am sitting at a cafe sipping on my latte sweet.
Misa pumping breastmilk from the sleeping wombat's swollen teat

has rising and falling accents, whether i write it out like the above, or as

I am sitting at a cafe sipping on my latte sweet. Misa pumping breastmilk from the sleeping wombat's swollen teat

but I don't get that in your piece?

[humility]

Yeah no matter what I did I couldn't quite hear the metre. I hadn't intended on posting anything until I could identify meter as something other than 'nice earworm quality' but someone PMed me and told me to post anyway. Unless Cadence is something different from metre. In which case I have no idea. But I plan to work on one thing at a time anyway. My rough rough draft before I tried cleaning it up and collapsing it was

Midnight Serpent sought to corrupt offspring
of a passed god no longer here, to forge
his own race with a power granted by
Avandra the Maiden of Change. Alas
the Spider Queen did whisper into his ear
secrets stolen from destiny about
many strong heroes rising one by one.
These did he seek to kill when they were babes,
But the machinations of fate are not
so thwarted easily and thus heroes sprung
just to protect the destined champions.
Generations passed, heroes came and went,
every attempt by the midnight serpent
to craft his own race failed. Finally in
frustration he sought out the counsel of
the old mother of witches. There he learned
a forbidden secret to thwarting fate.
Within the fairy land, destiny holds
little power and bonds between the fey
and its natural counterpart are strong
as anything else forged at creation.
One such bond exists between the wee folk
and mortal man, an inextricable link.
A human child's first cries are always
echoed by a wee pixie's first laughter.
And this cause and effect can be twisted
to work the other way. Thus the midnight
serpent did create a new poison, brewed
from tears of grieving parents and the dreams
of the slumbering dead. Within weeks of
every conception which would spring destined
heroes, The Master of Poisons sought out
and found the flower buds in which rested the
young pixies who waited for new life's cry
that would awaken their laughter and joy.
But nine never bloomed, nine died in the womb.
And the serpents curse upon man took root
and soft flesh was hardened unto scale. The nine
poisoned pixie buds were made a wreath and
given to the mother of witches as
a gift of gratitude. Grieved and wracked by
guilt at the fate she allowed to befall
man, the maiden of change sought to repent
in at least one small way.Thus Avandra
sought the mother of witches. None know what
price was paid, but she held the Pixie Wreath
in her hand as she left, placing it in
one of her temples until the day she
could rescue them from their poisoned slumber.

Here I was just trying to hit 10 syllables a line while trying to listen for metre. But the result was intolerably terrible. So I decided to focus on metre completely and not worry about how many syllables I get per line.

[Achebe]

I meant "cadence" in a layman's sense.
Let's start with your first line:

MID night SER pent SOUGHT to COR rupt OFF spring

If you're using a combination of a stressed + unstressed syllable ("trochaic meter"), it sounds more natural to use 8 feet rather than 10.  Eg.

MID night SER pent SOUGHT to COR rupt
OFF spring OF a PASSED god NO more
THERE etc. etc.

If you want to retain "longer", you can use 9 feet: 

MID night SER pent SOUGHT to COR rupt THE
OFF spring OF a PASSED god NO lon GER

although in this case, the succession of stressed syllables "THE OFF" necessarily requires you to pause a bit longer at the end of line 1
But the moment you go into 10 feet (pentameter) as in your original line, it sounds weird.
Pentameter works with iambs (unstressed + stressed), not trochees (stressed + unstressed):

the MID night SER pent SOUGHT to COR rupt THE
pale OFF spring OF a PASSED god NO lon GER

Incidentally, "corrupt" sounds more natural as cor RUPT rather than COR rupt
Just follow the metre in this poem (it's iambic) and use your ear:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-an...tail/44299

[humility]

I thought mid was the unstressed and night was the stressed. Somehow I got it all reversed? Or more likely as I got corrupt wrong its not reversed I just didn't hear it. And the Metre is just currently random.

[UselessBlueprint]

I think I saw you asking for a "meter" website tool in a previous thread. Most of the time, tools like that will be fairly reliable, but not enough that you should rely on them. Different languages (slash dialects) have rules to pronunciation and meter, and these sites tend to pick the most common (or the developer's local) dialect. I spent two years scanning Latin poetry in school (which has simple and strict rules), but my English scanning stills lacks sometimes, as the rules are more fluid. I prefer to use a site called upodn, which is designed for pronunciation but also includes stress marking. You have to use some sense when there are discrepancies, however. Such as the difference between musical records (reh-kurds) and a person who records (rih-kords) music. Websites don't know the difference.

For a couple of general English rules:
Many one-syllable words can work as either stressed or unstressed. You have to judge some special cases.
- I don't recommend stressing "in"
- I don't recommend stressing "the"
- I don't recommend making "I" (pronoun) unstressed.

Compounds words usually take both stresses, though one might be more stressed. This is why there is some confusion around "midnight" here. Typically, mid is more stressed than night. I try to avoid them in metered writing, but to see how it can be used, consult some of Shakespeare's sonnets (a few may not work in modern English). Notice how any sense of meter fails around "breastmilk"

cor-RUPT is more natural in the dialect I speak -- I'm not sure of any dialect where it is the other way around.

[Leanne]

Try an exercise in iambic pentameter. Fix the meter in your head and then put the words in. There is no way to get around practising, because in English some of the stresses are so subtle that they will actually change depending on the words that are around them.

This is excellent advice:

For a couple of general English rules:
Many one-syllable words can work as either stressed or unstressed. You have to judge some special cases.
- I don't recommend stressing "in"
- I don't recommend stressing "the"
- I don't recommend making "I" (pronoun) unstressed.

In general, you want to use the meter to stress important words. Don't have stresses fall on pointless fillers. Incidentally, there's no point in trying to just chop up a piece of prose into iambic pentameter. Why bother using any element of poetry at all when you're not entering into the spirit of it? That's like saying you practice Buddhism just because you're fat and like people rubbing your belly.

[humility]

I don't know what spirit means. I was just taking a random stab at it to see what happens. I guess Ill try making a bunch of those exercise poems when I get off work tomorrow to practice my metre.