Break It Up! (cont.)

Surprise: Sometimes, when there's a surprising word coming up, I like to break the line just before that word, so that the surprising word is the first one in the next line.  It's like the little pause in the action of a movie, where there's just background music and you know something interesting's about to happen.

Weight: I like to think of my words as having a weight, and each line needs to weigh about the same. Some words, like a, an, the, of, are unimportant, lightweight words. They only "weigh" a couple of ounces. Other words, verbs and nouns like sizzle, starlight, and desert, are heavier. They "weigh" four or five ounces. And then there are the heavy words, the words that carry great weight and impact in your particular poem. Each of those words, and there might only be one in your whole poem, "weighs" a lot.  Maybe a whole pound all by itself. So, if each line of my poem needs to weigh a pound, I might have a long line with several lightweight words and a couple of great nouns and verbs, or I might have just one very heavy word, etc. It's just about balancing things so that each line has about the same amount of impact on your reader.

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