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Concept
Constrained writing
Summary
Constrained writing is a literary technique in which the writer is bound by some condition that forbids certain things or imposes a pattern.
Constraints are very common in poetry, which often requires the writer to use a particular verse form.
Constraints on writing are common and can serve a variety of purposes. For example, a text may place restrictions on its vocabulary, e.g. Basic English, copula-free text, defining vocabulary for dictionaries, and other limited vocabularies for teaching English as a second language or to children.
In poetry, formal constraints abound in both mainstream and experimental work. Familiar elements of poetry like rhyme and meter are often applied as constraints. Well-established verse forms like the sonnet, sestina, villanelle, limerick, and haiku are variously constrained by meter, rhyme, repetition, length, and other characteristics.
Outside of established traditions, particularly in the avant-garde, writers have produced a variety of work under more severe constraints; this is often what the term "constrained writing" is specifically applied to. For example:
Reverse-lipograms: each word must contain a particular letter.
Univocalic poetry, using only one vowel.
Mandated vocabulary, where the writer must include specific words (for example, Quadrivial Quandary solicits individual sentences containing all four words in a daily selection).
Bilingual homophonous poetry, where the poem makes sense in two different languages at the same time, constituting two simultaneous homophonous poems.
Alliteratives or tautograms, in which every word must start with the same letter (or subset of letters; see Alphabetical Africa).
Lipogram: a letter (commonly e or o) is outlawed.
Acrostics: first letter of each word/sentence/paragraph forms a word or sentence.
Abecedarius: first letter of each word/verse/section goes through the alphabet.
Palindromes, such as the word "radar", read the same forwards and backwards.
Anglish, favouring Anglo-Saxon words over Greek and Roman/Latin words.
Official source
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