How to Write a Villanelle

Boy do we have a lot of homework this weekend! I've already worked 3-4 hours tonight! Part of my homework was to start writing the villanelle, and it's actually a lot of fun! Okay, so four characteristics of a villanelle are:

1) 5 tercets*, 1 quatrain**

2) Very specific rhyme scheme*** (a-b-a/a-b-a/a-b-a/a-b-a/a-b-a/a-b-a-a)

3) Very specific meter****

4) Repeating lines

The best way to explain it would be to show an example, which I found on the website that taught me how to write a villanelle:

The Enemy

Michael Mack

I see him calmly standing there – (a)
So confident and void of fear – (b)
Mocking me with icy stare – (a)

Unable to escape his stare – (a)
Of confidence combined with leer – (b)
I see him calmly standing there. – (a)

Sarcastic monster! How he dare – (a)
To criticize my weak veneer – (b)
Mocking me with icy stare. – (a)

Remindful of an old nightmare – (a)
Recurrent in my early years – (b)
I see him calmly standing there. – (a)

Fiend from darkness! How he bares – (a)
My soul with evil grin so queer – (b)
Mocking me with icy stare. – (a)

I strike at him with hatred bare! – (a)
But, through the shattered cracks of mirror, – (b)
I see him calmly standing there – (a)
Mocking me with icy stare – (a)

All the bolded words rhyme.

All the words in red rhyme. However, they don't have to exact rhymes like "year" and "queer". You can also use slant rhymes, which are words that you wouldn't think would rhyme but do, like "veneer" and "mirror".

The highlighted lines are the lines that repeat.

If you count the syllables of each line, you will find that most of them have eight syllables. This is the poem's meter. Notice how well the meter of the poem makes it flow. This is where the villanelle is like song lyrics; you have to make your words match the music. This is why it can sometimes be difficult because the words you want to use don't flow with the rest of the poem. What do you do? Toss 'em. However, you will also notice that some lines, like Line 17, have more syllables, and some, like Line 3, have less. This is where the meter can be flexible, so use your best judgement if you have more or less syllables in one line than the others. THIS IS WHERE READING YOUR POEM OUT LOUD CAN REALLLYYYY HELP!!!

My Steps to Success:

1) Write your quatrain first. This is core from which your villanelle will flourish.

2) Once you have your quatrain written, outline your poem and fill in every line you can. In other words, place each repeating line where it belongs.

3) As my mom said, it's like a Sudoku now. Fill in the blanks to correspond with your repeating lines.

THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND: 

1) I highly discourage looking up a word in a rhyming dictionary because I can almost guarantee your rhymes will come out forced. You want your rhyme to match the context of your line, not your line to match the context of your rhyme. (Hah! That was a rhyme!)

2) You CAN alternate your repeating lines a little bit as long as the core words remain so the reader knows that those are the repeating lines. 

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*tercet- a three-line stanza

**quatrain- a four-line stanza

***rhyme scheme- the ordered pattern of rhymes at the ends of the lines of a poem or verse.

****meter- a regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables (Ex: each line has six syllables)