Keep the following in mind:
For your sonnets:
14 lines
10 syllables per line
You should have written several drafts
The sonnet should make me feel something for you—compassion, empathy, etc.
The sonnet should be something that any of us can relate to—a universal.
Look at some of the lines in Shakespeare’s sonnets:
#1:
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory;
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring….
These words have power. They make us feel something. I want your sonnets to do that.
#18
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate. You’re even more lovely than a summer day!
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade Your summer won’t fade because I will
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st. immortalize your beauty in my art.
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, What better tribute is there than to
So long lives this, and this give life to thee. be immortalized in a work of art?
Write something that you would like to have written to you. Note the almost worshipful tone. It’s also a little bittersweet. You need to evoke feelings in your reader.
Shakespeare does not limit himself to one and two syllable words. You should not either. You need variety. Choose your words carefully.
