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Writing in verse



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Sat Jan 09, 2016 7:24 pm
queenofscience says...



How do you write quoats in verse? What about longer quotes in verse ( like almost a pharagraph) ? Do you need quotation marks? What do you do if another character is soeaking? What if your character has to explain somthing that that is long?

Any tips on writing in verse? Anything else I need to know about writing in verse? Thanks.
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Sat Jan 09, 2016 8:15 pm
Rosendorn says...



What do you mean by "verse"?
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Sat Jan 09, 2016 8:22 pm
queenofscience says...



Like in verse, kinda like poetry.
I am the science and science fiction guru.

The mind is beautiful, yet brilliant. You can think, create, and imagine so many things.

Eugenics= scientific racism.
  





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Sat Jan 09, 2016 8:47 pm
Rosendorn says...



You have two primary options, depending on the style you want to go for.

Type one: quotation marks, just like you would in prose, punctuated as per consistent with the poem (ie- you can lack capitalization so long as the rest of the poem does).

Type two: italics. Instead of surrounding the dialogue with quotation marks, you italicize it. I find this tends to occur more in stylized poetry, where quotation marks would ruin the flow.

But really, you can treat quotes in verse just like you would in prose, right down to the said tags.
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Thu Jan 14, 2016 4:32 am
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Kale says...



Depending on how long the verse is, you have several options. Typically, the longer the verse, the more likely it will be offset from the regular text, usually by a mix of indentation and italics, and often without quotation marks. You can see a lot of examples of this in The Lord of the Rings.

Shorter quotes, usually less than a single line on the page long, can also be offset, but it's more common to italicize them in-line with the dialogue and tags. The italics act as a signal that the verse is being quoted without the need for additional quotation marks. For example:

"You know what they say: An apple a day keeps the doctor away," she said, waving the fruit in my face.

You could also do it:

"You know what they say: 'An apple a day keeps the doctor away,'" she said...

But that's a bit overkill with the quotation marks, in my opinion. Opinions differ on this, of course, so go with whatever works best for you.
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Thu Jan 28, 2016 2:46 am
Karzkin says...



Here's an excerpt from a famous poem by T.S. Eliot:

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”


As you can see, he just uses regular quotation marks, which works fine. But that's just one example. The rules in poetry are way more relaxed than in prose (to the point of not existing haha). Do what you want honestly. Do whatever most effectively communicates your intention to the audience. Even try out a few different styles and see which works best.
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Mon Feb 01, 2016 3:24 pm
Lightsong says...



There are many ways to present dialogues in poetry, but be aware that each way emphasizes said poetry in varying degree. Italicizing it, for instance, would make the dialogue stands out more than other parts of the poetry because of its differences than others (it tells us why we italicize when emphasizing words within a poem). Putting the dialogue under quotation marks doesn't make it more stand out than other parts because the use of quotation marks are minimal and not distracting, barely noticeable but effective, like a period does to end the sentence.
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