Writing has always been therapy for me. Whenever life has thrown me curveballs, my mind automatically goes into “create mode” and I can’t help but express the way I’m feeling on paper—whether it be through prose or a narrative-style approach. That was how I started writing my novel, 21 Questions. It all began with a high school breakup. It’s crazy to believe that what started as simple teenage heartbreak ended up as a novel that will be published this year.

Although writing fiction is my first love, poetry has inspired my YA writing in so many ways. Truly, poetry is a simplified version of fiction. A poem has a story within itself and sometimes people don’t initially recognize that.

Free Verse as Journaling

When writing poetry, I usually write contemporary free verse. Even just practicing this style of poetry can be so useful for fiction writing. As writers, we have a tendency to let our inner critic block us from writing when we feel like what we have to say isn’t good enough. A lot of the time this is referred to as “writer’s block.” When experiencing this, it’s important to let go, quiet your mind, and allow yourself to just write without any judgement.

There’s a book called The Artist’s Way by Julie Cameron that discusses this. In it, Cameron suggests journaling every morning, at least three pages. All you have to do is jot down whatever comes to mind, even if you have to continuously write “I don’t know what to say.”

I compare free verse poetry to this because when you’re writing free verse, there’s no structure to it, no rhyme schemes or patterns, etc. Like a painter, you have a blank canvas, and you can allow your mind to wander. The important takeaway is that writing with this sense of freedom and lack of structure is great practice for preventing writer’s block.

Style

Another way in which poetry has inspired my YA writing is the style of it. Anyone can write. Anyone can write a complete sentence, with a subject and a verb. But to make the language beautiful, engaging, and create a sense of imagery is something that takes practice. Poetry, especially free verse, has such a unique sense of style. It’s beautiful. Even the way you punctuate it can alter how it flows.

Here is an example:

“Love is the kind of magic you don’t have to see to believe…” versus,

“Love… Love is the kind of magic you don’t have to see to believe.”

The second version has such a subtle change, but it reads entirely different from the first. There’s an intensity behind it that the first lacks and all I did was add “love…”.

Style is so important, and poetry teaches style. Not just free form poetry, but learning the elements of a haiku, a sonnet, and different rhymes schemes can shape your writing and how you verbally communicate with others.

Telling a story isn’t just about the words, it’s about the pictures we paint for our readers. Poetry and the freedom it allows us as writers to practice can be used as a foundation for fiction writing.