Young Writers Society

The Discussion Thread!

Bounce ideas off one another, share advice, and have fun!

Any rule about line length, or syllable pattern?

What's the difference between the A's and the a's?

A1 and A2 are the repeating lines.
a rhymes with A1/A2.
b is a separate rhyme scheme.

I'm also curious if there's any rules about structure.

I'm a bit confused...Can someone explain in greater detail?

As far as I can tell, there's no rule about line length, etc in villanelles! The only structural rules are how many lines are in each stanza, and the repeating lines of A1 and A2 (all the A1s are the same line, and all the A2s are the same line).

And @FatCowsSis is there anything specifically you're confused on? The basic objective is to write a villanelle style poem (the line structure is described in the event - you can also check the wikipeda page for a more detailed description) except the topic of the poem should be something not typically written about in poetry. So nix the love and nature crap, and write something weird!

Anything specific by villanelle?

From Dictionary.com:

Villanelle n: a short poem of fixed form, written in tercets, usually five in number, followed by a final quatrain, all being based on two rhymes.

^That helped me, combined with the format posted by Lauren.

Lauren, I think you missed a stanza in your format. A villanelle should have 19 lines. The last stanza before the quatrain should end in A2.

So how was my villanelle?

I think a lot of people didn't really read the instructions or look at the example.

Just wrote this before realizing that the full lines and not just the ending words had to be repeated. But I still want to give this baby a home.

Will points be taken off for either having only 4 tercets before the quatrain, or for minor typos? (I wrote 'if' instead of 'of'.)

niteowl wrote:Lauren, I think you missed a stanza in your format. A villanelle should have 19 lines. The last stanza before the quatrain should end in A2.

This is really true! -_-

I'm really sorry guys, that's totally my fault. I thought I got the whole thing copied down right but I guess I missed a stanza. No one will lose points for having followed my incorrect format!