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Kaj_Sotala comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 28, chapter 99-101 - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: palladias 12 December 2013 05:10AM

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Comment author: Kindly 15 December 2013 03:39:07PM 3 points [-]

Poetry is a union of form and content. Putting something into the form of a haiku is essentially trivial, so most haiku writers focus on content instead; however, your content should also be familiar to everyone reading, so you can't win there. (Also, #2 and #4 have 6 and 5 syllables in their respective second lines.)

Limericks would be good, if you could pull those off. Obviously, it would be harder. That's sort of the point, though: to impress people with form, you have to do something that isn't easy to do. On the other hand, if you write 101+ limericks, you'll probably be good at limericks by the end.

(Half good; I'm told the other half of limerick writing is that they have to be dirty and/or funny, ideally both.)

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 16 December 2013 10:02:35AM 3 points [-]

your content should also be familiar to everyone reading

Not for those who've had the time to forget about the contents of the story. This could be a useful way for people to remind themselves of the rough structure of the story without re-reading everything.