How to Write a Sonnet Poem

If you love to express yourself with creative writing, learning how to write a sonnet is valuable for you. It's not always easy to write sonnets because they require a lot of thought and discipline, even though they are relatively short. But follow this template and you'll be able to write your own sonnet, and with practice you'll get better and better.

Things You'll Need

• Pen or Pencil
• Paper

Instructions

1. Learning how to write a sonnet begins with discipline. Today's poetry is usually either lyrics or free verse, but a sonnet isn't either one. A sonnet has exactly 14 lines, a definite rhyme scheme which depends on which kind of sonnet you want to write, and it first presents and then resolves a problem, such as a love dilemma or anything else. So, to write sonnets, you have to use meter (usually iambic pentameter), rhyme, and a mixture of rationality and emotion. You don't just improvise a sonnet or make it all about your personal emotions, as people tend to do with today's dominant free verse mode. So begin with some problem that you're going to resolve before you put pen to paper or finger to keyboard.

2. When you write your own sonnet, you're going to use somebody else's form. You're not going to make up your own--. There are two main types of sonnet, the "Petrarchan" and the "Shakespearean". Each one of these has one variation: the Miltonic (for the Petrarchan) and the Spenserian (for the Shakespearean).

3. The Petrarchan or "Italian" sonnet was the original, created by the great poet Petarch in the Middle Ages. It starts off with an eight-line "octave" and concludes with a six-line "sestet". The rhyme pattern is abbaabba which then turns into either cdecde or cdcdcd. The octave presents the problem while the sestet resolves it. Originally sonnets were about the painful feelings of sexual love, but centuries later other great poets used sonnets to write about religion and politics.

4. The great English poet John Milton created a variation on the Petrarchan sonnet--he did not transition into the resolution until the 11th line of his sonnets. Later on, some English Romantic poets like William Wordsworth used a variation even on the Miltonian sonnet--they would make the rhyme scheme of the octave abbaacca (this was supposedly a more "natural" rhyme scheme to reflect more of how people really speak). When you write your own sonnet you can try one of these variants.

5. The Shakespearean sonnet is, of course, named after William Shakespeare, who developed his own form for the writing of his famous collection of sonnets. This sonnet is made up of three quatrains and then a final rhyming couplet. The rhyme is ababcdcdefefgg. The Spenserian sonnet is a variation on the Shakespearean, having the rhyme ababbabccdcdee. In the Shakespearean sonnet (and its variant) the resolution or "turn" does not come until the final rhymed couplet, so that most of the poem presents the problem and then it gets resolved in a decisive, powerful way.

6. When you are learning how to write a sonnet, try out all of these variations at some point. Again, while it's not easy to write sonnets, with practice you'll find yourself able to write your own sonnet in a way that sounds like your own style with a lot of creative fire in it.