Forbidden Words and a Creative Writing Prompt
Thanks for stopping by! If you're new here and want to keep up on poetry and 32 Poems, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed.
Do you have any words you’ve used so often in your writing that they are now forbidden?
A few of the stereotypical “poetry words” include: dark, darkness, moon, love, dawn, dusk, and words that mean various shades of red.
My own forbidden words include: light, sky and, yes, dark.
I’m curious why I want to write about light and the sky so often. At times, I allow those words to creep into drafts and edit them out.
Writing Prompt: If you’re here looking for a creative writing prompt, try this exercise. Write down 6 of your forbidden words. Write down 6 words you’ve never used in a poem before and that don’t often come up in your daily reading or conversation. Write a poem with the 6 “new” words and see where it takes you.
What are your forbidden words? Please share them with us in the comments below.
- December 9th
Light and dark were definitely tropes I used too much early on and had to cut back on. Breathing and blood and tongues were more I overused but haven’t been as bad about as my writing has progressed. Falling as a general concept (not the word itself) was one that sneaked by me–I wasn’t even aware of it until I created an index for my current manuscript.
I think of them as ‘instant poetry’ words:
“light,” “white,” “day,” “save” (as in ‘all were lost save one’)
“still,” “all,” “every,” are words you can place pretty much anywhere and they gives you an extra beat and instant hyperbole.
…the only thing is, I haven’t made these forbidden words yet! But lately I cringe when the come up, knowing I use them because I’m lazy. I think Robert Frost said something like, “I don’t want to use the words that people point and say, ‘Poetry!’ at”
Some day I’ll take that advice.
With me, it’s “truth” and “poem” especially poems about writing poetry. They’re not exactly forbidden words - I never turn away a poem - but you’d think after thirty-five years I would have said everything I had to say on both topics but I’m afraid not. People have been trying to decide what these two things are for a lot longer than that mind.
“Death”. It’s not forbidden for me yet, but I am getting there. It’s not so much about the word, but the theme itself. Many of my poems are about death.
I discovered your blog by accident - must say a very pleasant accident
Will follow regularly now.