Jan is Jan Fields, moderator of this interview/workshop with Shelly Becker, and Web Editor of the ICL Web Site. Green shows names or usernames of people and the questions they asked Shelly.

Jan: WELCOME to GUEST SPEAKER CHAT with Shelly Becker. I'm your host, moderator, and resident pontificator -- Jan Fields. I'm looking forward to learning a lot about rhyme in tonight's Rhymer's Workshop. Welcome Shelly and thanks for joining us tonight!

Shelly: Thanks so much for having me here, Jan.

Jan: We've got some verses lined up to workshop, but I wanted to chat a moment. So, tell us about Mine, Mine, Mine...how are things going with your dear one? Doing school visits? Getting reviews? Meeting presidents and queens yet?

Shelly: Mine Mine Mine has been getting some nice reviews. I haven't met any presidents or queens...yet!

Jan: We can tell by nifty photo that the audience is seeing right now...the one I cobbed off your website, that you've done some book signings?

Shelly: Yes, I have. I've done some radio interviews, too

Jan: Oh, radio is good...was it scary?

Shelly: very scary :) but fun too.

Jan: Are you working on anything rhymy right now? You know, some of my made-up words just look weird when I type them...rhymey...rhymie...hmm.

Shelly: Oh yes. Quite a few rhymy things.I'm always working on rhymy things....I think rhymie looks best.

Jan: Do you do any short verse? Or is it usually for a book?

Shelly: I do short verse, too. Some of my poems have been published in Highlights. But mostly picture books.

Jan: So do you do rhyme totally "by ear" or do you ever have to struggle with your meter? Are you one of them "naturals?"

Shelly: Both. :) I do it by ear, and I have to struggle at times. It's not always easy, but it's always a wonderful feeling to get it right.

Jan: Can you always "hear" it when it's not right? I know I can get myself so twisted up sometimes that it sounds right to me, so I always scan the meter to be sure...but then I am so not a natural rhymer.

Shelly: I can usually tell right away, but it depends how absolutely wrong or right or in between it is. if it's only slightly off, I have to scan the meter. Sometimes it's hard to be objective about your own work. But it's usually easy to see the faults in somebody else's. :)

Jan: Okay...I seem to be overhogging the guest. Let's snag a couple audience questions. Then we'll hit some workshop verse, okay?

Shelly: Sure, let's have some questions.

Shelly: Meter is rhythm or beat. When you read a piece with good meter (rhythm), it’s very much like music. You almost can’t help tapping your foot, or bopping along with it as you read. When you finish, the beat is still in your head. Meter is achieved by using a consistent pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Shelly: Right means that it's done well. The rhythm is smooth. The end rhymes actually rhyme. And the story is great. Meter isn't exactly the number of syllables. It's more about the number of stressed syllables and the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. You really need to look at each line and examine where the natural stresses fall. Not where you WANT them to fall. But where they actually DO fall when you read the story out loud, naturally, as if you were speaking and not rhyming.

Shelly: Jan, maybe I should give an example of good meter to demonstrate.

Jan: Hey, good idea.

Shelly: Okay, we'll use this: Mary had a little lamb/ It's fleece was white as snow/ And everywhere that Mary went/ The lamb was sure to go./

Shelly: This is four lines. The first line has 4 stressed syllables, the second has 3, the third has 4 again (mirroring the first), and the fourth line has 3 (mirroring the second). Do you see the pattern?

Jan: Like this, right: MA-ry HAD a LI-tle LAMB for the first line?

Shelly: Exactly. I was just about to do that. You saved me the trouble. :) Also, within each line the pattern is consistently stressed syllable, unstressed syllable, stressed syllable, unstressed syllable, and so forth.

Shelly: Or you could do it like this: BUM ba BUM ba BUM ba BUM

Shelly: I like to use the BUM ba method because it takes the words out of it and you can really focus on the rhythm.

Jan: Doesn't line two and four actually go unstressed/stressed? it's FLEECE was WHITE as SNOW?

Shelly: Yes, you're right about lines two and four. But since lines one and three end with a stressed syllable, it continues the same pattern of stressed, unstressed, stressed, unstressed all the way through the stanza. All of the lines except for the first actually begin with an unstressed syllable.

Jan: Ahhh...so you look at the overall poem as one long pattern...oh, that's interesting. I never looked at it that way...cooleo.

Shelly: Yes, I look at the whole piece.

Shelly: Hi Lyon. Usually you want to use the same pattern for every stanza. But every rule has its exceptions. Sometimes you'll see refrains which are a different rhythm. A refrain is a repeating stanza (or couplet, or line) that i used intermittently throughout a rhyming piece. It breaks up and changes the rhythm somewhat. But it still remains consistent throughout the book. Also, sometimes you can change the rhythm slightly to show the changing action in the story. But you really need a good ear to be able to do that and to know if it works. When starting out, it's always best to stick strictly to the "rules" But once you know what you're doing, you can break the rules occasionally, if you know why you're doing it and you believe it works.

Jan: Okay, we're going to start our workshop verse with a bedtime verse...

Shelly: Thanks for sharing these lines, Ruth! You're quite ambitious, wanting to get kids to ASK to go to bed. (I wish you could come over right now and get my kids to do that.)

Shelly: Before I get into the technical stuff about rhythm and rhyme, I just want to make a general comment about writing picture books, or any books for kids actually. I worry when I hear that a writer has an agenda in writing their book. And I think this is something editors are weary of as well. your goal, first and foremost should always be to tell a great story. If you try to teach a lesson, your story is in danger of being didactic. That doesn't mean a story can't teach a subtle lesson, but SUBTLE is the key word. Morals are usually a natural outgrowth of a great story, not the other way around. So story has to come first. Always. And that's the way it is when you write in rhyme, too. Story must always be in the driver's seat. Rhyme and rhythm are merely passengers along for the ride. They're there to make the trip more enjoyable, but don't let them become backseat drivers!

Shelly: Now we'll look at the lines that Ruth was kind enough to share. Let's go back to what I was saying before about meter. Meter is achieved by using a consistent pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. Sometimes there are lines that can be read in more than one way. This is how I read these words: If you LISten to REGular SPEECH. But some of you might have emphasized the first word as well. In fact, even when I read it, When I read it, sometimes I emphasize IF and other times I don't. This is what I call an optional stress. And what I mean by that is some people might stress that syllable and other might not. Or the same person might read it differently at different times. That’s because it lacks a definite rhythm. You goal, when writing in rhyme, is to establish a definite rhythm. You want to force the reader to read it according to the meter that you've established. And you do that by choosing and arranging your words carefully, so that there's only one way to read it. So does that mean you can never use the line above when writing in rhyme? No. It means, only use it if you're sure you can make your reader read it in the one way that fits with the rhythm of your story. So first make sure that one of the natural ways of reading it fits exactly with your meter. So if the rhythm of your story is ba ba BUM ba ba BUM ba ba BUM, and content-wise, that line is necessary for your story, then go ahead and use it, but please make sure that by the time the reader comes across this line, you've clearly established that pattern. In other words, once the reader knows the beat and is tapping along, you can be certain that he/she will read it the way you want them to. But avoid using lines like this at the beginning of a piece.

Shelly: Okay, FINALLY, Ruth's lines: I DREADed BEDtime when I was FOUR/ AFter ALL, (WHY) SLEEP when I could PLAY some MORE?/ UnTIL (ONE) (NIGHT)…I disCOVered a FIERCE and feROCious-(LOOK)ing BEAR/ And at FIRST I (WANT)ed to HIDE./ I deCIDed to (SHARE) my (PET) (ROCK) inSTEAD/ And he SAID he’d be my FRIEND for LIFE!/

Shelly: I've placed the stressed syllables in caps, and the optional stresses in parentheses. (By the way, optional stresses is a term I just made up on the spot. I'm sure there's an official term and if anybody knows it, please share it with us!) So going back to what I said about optional stresses, we can only use them once we've established a definite rhythm. Never at the beginning. So I would definitely recommend revising these so that the meter is even and there's only one way to read it. I’m having a really hard time finding the meter here. There are so many optional stresses that there's no "right" way to read it. It's possible that the meter becomes more even further along, but these are opening lines and they're really the most important. I DREADed BEDtime when I was FOUR. ba BUM ba BUM ba ba BUM ba BUM/ AFter ALL, (WHY) SLEEP when I could PLAY some MORE?/ BUM ba BUM (BUM) BUM ba ba ba BUM ba BUM.

Shelly: I'll type out the rest of the sample line in ba BUMs so we can forget about the actual words and focus on the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables: Ba BUM (BUM) (BUM)…ba ba BUM ba ba BUM ba ba BUM ba (BUM) ba BUM/ ba ba BUM ba (BUM) ba ba BUM/ ba ba BUM ba ba (BUM) ba (BUM) (BUM) ba BUM/ ba ba BUM ba ba ba BUM ba BUM/ ba ba BUM ba (BUM)…

Shelly: Take a few minutes to look at it and see if you can find any pattern. We're looking for patterns within the lines themselves and also within the stanza from one line to the next. I'm noticing two things. One, each line seems to have a different number of stressed syllables, whether I count the optional stresses or not. And two, the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables is not consistent. So, Ruth, I would recommend choosing a specific rhythm and sticking with it. Study published rhyming picture books (um, preferably not the ones written by celebrities—and no offence if any celebrities are reading this). Writing a rhyming picture book takes much time (and frustration) and patience (and frustration) and skill (and FRUSTRATION) and revision. But when you finally succeed... it's INCREDIBLY rewarding and VERY worth the effort. So keep working at it, Ruth, and I wish you much success! Also, and this isn't just for Ruth but for everyone. Sometimes a story is better told in prose than in rhyme. If it doesn't work in rhyme, try it in prose.

Jan: Can we take a moment to talk about ways to spot the REAL stresses in your verse? I know proper names are usually stressed...and action verbs. Multi-syllable words can just be looked up in the dictionary to find the stresses. And tiny words generally aren't stressed...right?

Shelly: Yes, yes, and yes. Although, I'm not sure about tiny words. I'd have to think about that.

Jan: I meant like "of" or "an" or "the" -- stress on those tends to be unstressed. Most of those pronoun, conjunction, preposition words are kind of ambigous...but tend toward not stressed.

Shelly: Yes, if that's what you mean by tiny words, I would guess you're probably right.

Jan: But can be stressed for effect like THE Shelly Becker.

Shelly: Excellent example, THE Jan Fields. :)

Jan: Non specific kind of niffish words, don't get guarenteed stress...but could be stressed, depending.

Jan: So you want to be really careful about the use of those little ambiguous stressed one syllable words in early lines when you're setting the meter, right?

Shelly: Absolutely. The early lines have to establish a clear rhythm. And once you've established that rhythm well, your reader knows it and is already singing along to it, so you can get away with using those iffy words later at that point.

Shelly: At times it really all depends on the person who's reading it and their speech patterns.

Shelly: And sometimes people with different regional accents say certain words differently

Jan: Oh, yeah...I'm Southern so some of my words get extra syllables.

Shelly: yes, mary, a good rhyme is like listening to music.

Shelly: Stretch, I only write rhyming poems, so I'm not the right person to answer that question. I'm sorry.

Shelly: I think that could be very challenging, but not impossible. I do have a writer friend who wrote some non-fiction in a poetry format. It was really great. But it was more of a poetry collection, and not a how to book. The bottom line is if you want to try it, I think you should try it. It will either work or it won't. But if you don't try, you'll never know. So go for it, and good luck!

Shelly: If you mean rhyming picture books, I don't think that's a different market than prose picture books. (But I'm more on the writing side, not the market side.) And I think that there's always a market for a great rhyming book.

Shelly: Hi Alayne. Thanks for sharing these lines! The rhythm is smooth for the most part, but it can use just a bit of tweaking. I’ll convert your words to ba BUMs for you (and the other chatters) and then see what we can do to even out the meter.

Shelly: Here's the first set. (Read it out loud and tap along with it.) Ba ba BUM ba BUM, ba ba BUM ba BUM/ ba BUM ba ba BUM ba BUM/

Shelly: Looking at the first two lines of the stanza, the pattern is clear. Two unstressed syllables, one stressed, then one unstressed and one stressed. This exact pattern repeats once more on the same line. The next line is basically the same, except that it skips the first ba ba BUM. Great! We can feel the beat and it's enjoyable to read. The third line is slightly off, though. It's actually not too bad, but how about:

Shelly: Stepping UP to the GLASS, looking OUT beYOND. That way it mimicks the pattern of the first line almost exactly. Actually, not almost exactly. Exactly.

Shelly: See, Jan? Sometimes I can't tell exactly right away and I have to check how it scans.

Jan: Yes, but you're sooooo much better than I am...I bow to your greatness of rhyme.

Shelly: LOL. Thanks, Jan.

Jan: How did you feel about the seen/keen rhyme. I know Alayne worried about it.

Shelly: SEEN/KEEN didn't bother me at all. It was the SORT OF that messed up the rhythm of that stanza. The fourth line has an extra stressed syllable and it really jumps out. Take out the words SORT OF and now read the two lines again, while tapping out the beat.

Shelly: A glistening sight was seen./ The shimmering sparkles were keen.ba BUM ba ba BUM ba BUM/ba BUM ba ba BUM ba ba BUM

Shelly: Now the whole stanza has a consistent pattern. I'll move on to the second stanza now. If this is from the same story, and I think it is, the stanza structure should be the same as the other one. Here you’ve got three stressed syllables in each line. In your last stanza, you had 4/3/4/3. So to keep the meter consistent from stanza to stanza, let's make this one 4/3/4/3 too. And we'll also try to keep the rhythm the same.

Shelly: As the morning sun cast its shining light,/ on the blades of bright green grass./ I rubbed my eyes as I focused on/ what covered the thick green mass./ -- So I made a few small changes, but now the meter is consistent from one line to the next and one stanza to the next. Do you see it?

Jan: Oh yea -- good fixes. Okay, since this is the "Rhymer's Workshop" we're going to go ahead and jump right into the last workshop piece...and then catch up some audience questions at the end as time permits. I like seeing Shelly work hard :-)

Shelly: Hi Sandra, your meter is excellent! It's really perfect and a pleasure to read. Before I answer your question, I have one comment. Beware of near rhyme! TIME and LINE don't rhyme. They're similar sounding, but they don't rhyme. I also notice that you used near rhyme again in your second stanza. COMPETE and STREETS do not exactly rhyme. You could fix this by changing the last line to: And the freshly shoveled street.

Shelly: The question of how to format it is really up to you. It's totally a matter of personal preference. I think it works just as well either way and I don't think there's any right or wrong. So do it the way you like it best (or flip a coin) and don't sweat the small stuff! And keep in mind that once a manuscript is accepted, the publisher determines the formatting.

Shelly: As I was saying to Jan at the beginning, when we discussed Mary Had a Little Lamb, I look at how the entire poem scans. So it doesn't make a whole lot of difference how it's formatted, as long as the meter is even (and it is!) and it's easy to read.

Shelly: I'm not an editor, so I'm really not the right person to give you a definitive answer, but I wouldn't suggest doing that. I've heard it said that editors might not be interested in a manuscript that's been published elsewhere, but truly I can't speak for any editors and my best answer would have to be: I don't know.

Shelly: Hmmmm....this is kind of tricky. The answer is sometimes. If it serves the story and if you don't overdo it. If you do that, you have to make sure the words that you put in caps actually make sense when they're stressed. Like THE Jan's earlier example. Don't do it if it won't make sense and you're only doing it to make the meter smooth.

Shelly: Lyon, this is another case of It Depends :) It depends whether the extra syllable is stressed or unstressed and it depends on how it works with the rest of the meter. The best thing to do is to get out your thesaurus and see if there's another word you can use. Or another phrase altogether. Play with it. Brainstorm. Don't be afraid to change a line or even an entire stanza if need be. There's almost always a way to say what you want to say within the meter of your ms, if you're patient and persistent. But once in a while, there really is no other way, and then you have to see if it works or not.

Jan: Okay, I hate to be the party pooper but we're near the two hour mark and we've worked Shelly to a nub so I'm just going to let her answer one more question...

Shelly: Hi tgseale! Well, my revision process can sometimes take years... I have some manuscripts that have been revised 15-20 times. The process isn't always the same, but the idea is: keep revising/rewriting until it works or I've given up on the idea. I also benefit greatly from the feedback my critique group gives me. Having other experienced and talented writers giving feeback on my work is often what tells me that I need to revise in the first place. :) And the second place. :) And the third. :)

Jan: Now...I want to say...golly, thank you Miss Shelly. You worked hard tonight!

Shelly: Thanks, Jan! And thanks to all the chatters. I worked hard, but it was fun! I love rhyming! :)

Jan: Thanks again, Shelly...and um...I might be begging you for answers to a couple questions leftover...through email...and um...if you still wuv me.

Shelly: No need to beg Jan. Feel free to email them my way.

Jan: Thanks again...and good night everyone...it wouldn't have been any fun without ya.

Shelly: Thanks, Jan and everybody.