Turn a short prose passage into verse; two days later, turn it back.
WhenOnce or twice a week
“But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses; since the continual occasion for words of the same import, but of different length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again.”
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, chapter II, in Frank Woodworth Pine ed. (1916); events c.1720; retrospective manuscript written 1771–1790. Read the source ↗
Why it works
He used verse constraints to search for words of different length and sound, then returned to prose. The awkwardness is part of the exercise.
Start tiny
Turn one sentence into two rough rhyming lines in 90 seconds.
What you’ll notice
Look for a word you would not otherwise have tried.
When it slips
Do not aim for publishable poetry. Keep the meaning and compare the final prose with the starting passage.
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, chapter II, in Frank Woodworth Pine ed. (1916); events c.1720; retrospective manuscript written 1771–1790. Read the source ↗
Challenge: A bounded mission with a clear finish. It can combine practices over days or weeks.
