Example
from 99 Ways To Tell a Story: Exercises in Style by Matt MaddenWhat to do
Select from the following jokes or choose one of your own and graphically tell it from multiple perspectives:- Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?
To get to the other side. - Why didn't the skeleton cross the road?
Because he had no guts. - Why did the chicken cross the road halfway?
To 'lay it on the line'." - Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, "My friend is dead! What can I do?". The operator says "Calm down. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says "OK, now what?"
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Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson go on a camping trip. After a good dinner, they retire for the night, and go to sleep.
Some hours later, Holmes wakes up and nudges his faithful friend. "Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see."
"I see millions and millions of stars, Holmes" exclaims Watson. "And what do you deduce from that?"
Watson ponders for a minute.
"Well, astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful, and that we are a small and insignificant part of the universe. What does it tell you, Holmes?"
And Holmes said: "Watson, you idiot, it means that somebody stole our tent."
JUNCTURE poems - points where the reader must choose from alternatives, and so be led to a different next section of the poem depending on the choice made. A kind of fore-runner to HYPERTEXT.
HOMOSYNTAX poem, replace all the words of an existing poem with new words, while preserving grammar and syntax.
PIED POETRY involves rearranging all the words of a poem to achieve a new one (the rules permit varying punctuation and capitalization)
The SNOWBALL poem has each word one letter longer than its predecessor;
In the CYCLICAL POEM the last letter of each word is the first letter of the next.
To write a LESCURE ALGORITHM poem, a formula is applied, of the type N + 7. This means that each noun in a poem is replaced by the noun seven words ahead of it (or behind) in a dictionary. Related is the technique of LESCURE SWITCHING. To do this replace the first noun in a poem with the last and vice-versa then the second-from-start with the second-from-last, and so on.
LIPOGRAM is one of the oldest - the poem (or indeed novel) which totally avoids use of one or more letter of the alphabet - Nestor of Laranda translated the Aeneid, omitting a different vowel from each Book, in Ancient times. Try a long poem, for example, avoiding all words which contain the letter 'e', and you will find the effort forces fresh approaches on you. A short poem which uses only one vowel, again, can produce powerful alliterative effects.
