[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]I love our poetry slams. I love learning new forms, trying something I haven’t tried before, and putting it out there into the world for other writers to look at and help me focus on.
But I thought we’d try something a little different this month.
Instead of focusing on a specific form, we’re going to focus on a genre and use it to explore a couple techniques.
As you probably guessed from the title (see what I did there?) this month’s poetry slam is all about riddles. The process of learning to come up with and develop a good riddle is something that will help you out with all your poetry, with titles, and as a special bonus, with microstories. So hang in there and check it out![/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
what is a riddle, anyway?
A riddle is a statement or question describing something. The object of riddling is for the questionee to guess what the riddle describes. Riddles can be divided into two categories: enigmas and conundra. (Yeah. The plural of conundrum is conundra.) While the object in both cases is to guess the solution, enigmas and conundra require different logical paths to reach the answer.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
enigmas
Enigmas are riddles that require logic to reach the answer, but do not require you to “think around corners” or utilize puns or doublespeak. Think about Frodo and Gollum’s riddle-game in The Hobbit:
It cannot be heard, cannot be felt
Cannot be seen, cannot be smelt
It lies behind stars and under hills,
And empty holes it fills.
It comes first and follows after,
Ends life, kills laughter.
The answer, of course, is “dark.” And once you know the answer, it’s easy to backtrack the logical steps that lead up to it. This is the sign of a good enigma.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
conundra
A conundrum is a riddle that requires wordplay to solve. For example: when is a door not a door? When it is ajar. This conundrum depends on the play between “ajar” which means “partially open,” and “a jar” which is, of course, not a door at all but, um, a jar.
Conundra, for me, are trickier to write than enigmas. They require my brain to go the same place it needs to in order to solve the Washington Post crossword (but not the NY Times, and definitely not the Chicago Sun-Times, although if you want an example of how not to write a conundrum, that’s a good one to use). In the end, a conundrum is really just the long-form setup for a clever pun.
And then of course, there’s my favorite conundrum:
What’s the difference between a cat and a complex sentence?
A cat has claws at the end of her paws and a complex sentence has a pause at the end of its clause.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
what’s the difference between a riddle and a joke, then?
You can’t solve a joke with logic.
No, really, that’s the difference. Some riddles are jokes, but not all jokes are riddles, even if they have a riddle-style form. Think of the classic “what has four wheels and flies?” Sure, the pun-answer “a garbage truck” makes sense and would solve that riddle. But now examine “what’s red and white and black all over?” Think about how many answers are just as good as “a newspaper” (or, the way I learned it, “a penguin in a blender” which just goes to show you that this isn’t a riddle at all because it has more than one answer which is an equally good fit.)[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
enough, enough, just tell me the format of one of these things
Sorry, no can do.
Just about anything is fair game for a riddle- you could write it in the form of a sonnet, free verse, haiku, tanka, blank verse, just a little story like a word problem, or almost any other way you can think of. I wanted to give you a little more freedom to explore, this month – to revisit a form you particularly enjoyed working with, or to branch out.
Try working a riddle into a longer poem if you tend to write short ones, or into a story if you usually write poetry. Think of songs or books that contain riddles, and riff on those themes. Sneak a riddle into a sonnet that’s answered in the envoi, or don’t include the answer at all and see who can guess it in the comments! (A quick reminder: if you try to make your microstory a riddle, any additional words in your post count towards your ultimate limit of 42. Also answering a question with a question is going to be as hard to get away with on the grid as it was when you tried it with your parents.)[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
and riddles will help with my what, now?
Titles, you guys. Titles.
Think about it. Nobody writes with perfect clarity all the time. A title is a great way to give your readers a hint about what you’re trying to say.
Imagine your story, or poem, or novel, is a riddle. The “answer” to the riddle is the feeling or idea that you’d like your reader to come away with. You can just use that TL;DR version of your work as the title, or you can use the title to give a hint at the answer of the riddle. It’s a great way to get away from being Poe or Dickinson and just using a line from your poem as the title. To take an example off our focus on fiction’s bookshelf this month, Ed McBain often uses a line from a fairytale as a title for a crime thriller. With that line in your head, you start to see where he’s building on the fairytale or using character names or occupations like an in-joke with the reader. It’s not necessary to think of the fairytale to read or understand the story, but it gives the reader context they otherwise wouldn’t have had, and it can be like finding hidden surprises in the story itself. It also gives you a way to make connections that you wouldn’t otherwise have made, like if the title of a book was “and so between the two of them” you know that there will be a Jack Sprat character, and a wife, and that the two of them will be connected in some endeavor that requires both their skills.
This is especially useful in microstories, where you may not have enough words to say what you need to, and it would be helpful if the reader came to the story in a particular frame of mind or with some context.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_video title=”a parting riddle for you…” src=”“https://www.youtube.com/embed/UgCNM-yLg_A“” width=”“560“” height=”“315“” frameborder=”“0“”][/vc_column][/vc_row]
