How Chance Methods can enhance your poetry—with (lots of) examples
This article is for: All of us!
Sometimes, things that happen by chance turn out to be the best things.
For example, one week, I happened by accident to send an email meant for a handful of people to everyone on my list!
While this seemed like bad luck at first, it later proved to be beneficial: It sparked a number of interesting conversations on email that wouldn't have happened otherwise, and made some new connections happen as well. The chance event was useful!
On a much bigger scale, I met my wife by the merest fluke of fortune—and now we’ve been together 20 years!
You probably have similar experiences in your life—great things that happened by sheer luck.
In poetry too, sometimes the best poems are the ones that happen by chance.
In life, there may not be much we can do to make the good luck happen.
But in writing, you can deliberately cultivate chance to make it work for you.
So in this article, I’m going to cover:
How you can use randomness and luck to liven up your writing and create great results.
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What are chance methods?
Chance methods are any approach where you hand over some control to unpredictable outside forces.
They are also called “aleatory,” from the Latin for “dice game,” which gives you the idea: if you’re rolling the dice of luck in some way as you write, you’re using chance methods.
I’ll give you lots of examples of this soon. But before that, I want to address something that always occurs to me when this topic comes up:
Don’t we always give up control like this, anytime we write?
One of the best things about writing, maybe even the whole magic of it, is how we constantly write things we didn’t expect.
This can range from a single unexpected word that suddenly pops into your head when you’re trying to get s description write, to a surprising metaphor that suggests itself for reasons you don’t fully understand, to a whole startling idea for a poem that seems to come from nowhere!
These are the things that make writing exciting, to create and to read as well. Yes, we do often have intentions and goals for a poem, but many times the best stuff seems to come randomly—by chance, in fact.
And that’s because these are the moments when you are connecting most strongly with your creative unconscious. This is a force that you don’t normally access in day-to-day experience, but which can supply you with unforeseeable and astonishing material if you can tap into it.
So what’s the difference between this experience and so-called “Chance Methods”?
Well, I would say, Chance Methods take this idea of assistance that’s out of your control, and do it more explicitly, more consciously, and in a more extreme way.
For that reason, they often seem very different from a more “normal” writing process. But I believe that the secret of their success is really just the same: they bring your creative unconscious into play in powerful ways.
Or at least they can do—like any other way of generating poems, they don’t work every time. But when they do, they are wonderful!
More on why Chance Methods work
To make sure you believe me that the crazy approaches I’m about to list are a good idea, I want to elaborate a little bit on three particular ways that Chance Methods activate your creative mind:
1. Chance Methods remove burdens
The creative impulse hates being weighed down with responsibility, concerns, and worries.
It basically just wants to fling words and ideas around, and make a fun mess!
So when you feel a great deal of responsibility, or seriousness, this can be antithetical to creativity.
And one of the biggest causes of that is choices. Or specifically, feeling responsible for your choices and whether or not they are “good enough.”
Chance Methods relieve you of that burden by taking choice away from you. Suddenly what you’re writing isn’t up to you any more—and that can be very freeing!
2. Chance Methods introduce fresh ideas
Creativity hates sameness—but it loves newness.
So if you always use the same kind of method to write, and/or often write about similar topics, your creativity may start to nod off.
But if you introduce some surprising new material for it to work on, that is nothing like your usual language and thinking, it will probably perk up!
So that’s another very valuable things that Chance Methods do: bring material into your writing that you wouldn’t be able to dream up for yourself.
3. Chance Methods set challenges
Creativity loves to be set a puzzle to solve or a hurdle to jump!
And a lot of Chance Methods do that. For example, by bringing two or more unconnected ideas to your attention, and ask you to figure out a way to join them.
Examples of chance methods
Ok, enough theory—here are a bunch of examples.
I have tried to separate them by the kind of input they give you—topic, structure, or words—but there’s a lot of overlap.
Chance Words
I’m starting with words because as poets they are our medium, and sometimes even a single word can give us a whole poem.
1. Choose words at random from a book
Open a book at random, then close your eyes and put your finger on the page. What word do you get?
Write it down, then repeat a few more times—with the same book, or with a new one.
Once you have about 4-8 words, assess what you’ve got:
How could you write a poem that includes all these words? OR
And how could one or two of then define the theme or topic of the poem?
2. Go through your own notebook for phrases or images
You can repeat that exercise with your own notebook—but you might like to pick out whole lines or phrases this time.
Write down about 4-6 of them—from different pages, drafts, or even different notebooks.
And again, ask yourself:
How could you weave all of them together into the same poem? OR…
Which one or two might set the theme or topic?
3. Stop the alphabet
Ideally you need someone to help you with this one, but it is also possible to do it solo.
Have your volunteer go through the alphabet in their head. At some point, you say “Stop,” and they tell you what letter they were on. For example, “P.”
Then both of you make a list of 5-10 random words that begin with P.
Combine the two lists, and make a poem that uses at least half of these words—including ones you didn’t choose.
4. Random numbers and lists of words
Technology offers several ways to introduce chance elements, via random numbers.
First, create a table where you assign numbers to words. Here are the first few rows of one, as an example:
1 Armchair
2 Justice
3 Shiver
4 Mango
But make yours much longer.
Then use a random number generator, like https://randomnumbergenerator.org/, to get yourself 4-6 random numbers.
Write out the words that go with these numbers—and make a poem that uses all of them!
5. Cut up a text
This method uses scissors and gravity and is a lot of elementary-school fun!
Choose any text that you don’t mind destroying. A newspaper, a copy of a poem, junk mail.
Cut the text up into 8-16 equal rectangles. The easiest way is to cut it in half lengthways first, then snip each half into fourths or eighths.
Throw the pieces into the air, and let then flutter to the floor! Then fit the pieces together in a way suggested by where they landed.
Look for interesting and weird phrases that happen where sentences flow across the cuts. Write down at least 4 of these. And as before, ask yourself:
How could you use these in a poem?
Which one could start the poem?
Chance Topics
Here are ways to generate a whole idea for a poem using randomness.
1. Write about whatever is around you
A very simple one first. When you’re ready to write, simply close your eyes. Turn around a few times, then open your eyes.
Whatever you’re looking at is what you’re going to write about!
2. Pick a time—what’s there?
An variation of this is:
Choose a specific time of day—say, 2:13pm—and set an alarm.
When the alarm goes off, what’s around you? What can you hear? What are you doing?
Write a poem about one or more of those things! (You can do the actual writing later.)
3. Listen and borrow
Next time you are listening to some conversation, whether you’re part of it or just overhearing it, listen out for one phrase that strikes you as interesting in some way. Write it down or remember it.
How could that piece of talk become the title or first line of a poem?
Taking words from news, podcasts, or even social media also works. And you can use more than one phrase, of course.
4. Steal from other poets!
A similar idea to the last one, but using a book of poetry as your starting point.
Grab a book of poems, and open it at random.
What is the topic of the first poem you see? Write your own poem on the same topic.
Alternatively, what is the first line of the first poem you see? Write a poem of your own that uses that line as either its first line or its last line.
5. Music playlists
Music can be a great stimulus for writing, and you can add a chance element to how you find music to write about. For example:
If you have Spotify or another music app, find a Playlist, choose a song at random, and listen to it. Then draft a poem that responds to that song in some way.
Try doing this with playlists that are not your own, as well as ones that are. Then you’ll get some songs you have associations with, and some surprises.
Turn on the radio and tune to a music station. What’s the first song you hear? Respond to that.
6. Find an image
Photos, paintings, or other images also work great to start poems. As with music, the trick here is to get an image that you didn’t choose.
So you can:
Ask someone to send you an image
Search images on the web using a keyword, then use the first image that grabs your eye
Go to your local library, find the Art section, choose a book and open it at random.
Chance Forms
Lastly, a few ways to let chance decide what the final poem will look like. There aren’t as many of these, but I can think of a few.
You can always use one of the earlier methods to find a topic to write about as well.
1. Roll the dice
There are at least four numbers that can go with the form of a poem:
Number of lines in total
Number of lines per stanza
Number of stanzas in total
Number of syllables or words per line.
Any of these can be chosen randomly! Either by using a random number generator, or simply by rolling dice.
So for example, roll the dice twice and you might get a 3 and a 6.
That could suggest a poem with 3 lines per stanza and 6 stanzas in total!
Or maybe you write a poem where the lines are all either 3 syllables long or 6 syllables long.
2. Steal from another poet… again
Earlier I said you could use a topic or a line from another poem—but you can also borrow a form as well.
Open the book at random, choose a page, and then copy the form you see there.
I suggest trying to copy it exactly at first—but then allowing yourself to deviate from it as you go through redrafting.
3. Random choices in repeating forms
Some poetic forms that rely on repetition are particularly amenable to Chance.
For example, you might use the Random Number Generator plus a list of words to choose six end words at random for a sestina.
Or you might use the Listening to Talk or Cut-Up methods to find two previously unconnected phrases that could be the refrains of a villanelle.
Any rhyming form can also be made random: simply choose rhyme words by chance before you start.
Last words: make your own methods too!
I hope you’ll try out many of these ideas! And if you get to like this approach, you can make up your own Chance Methods too!
Simply think about these four sources of chance forces:
Books and other written texts
The world around you
Technology
Other people
….and come up with a way that one of them can give you something random.
This way, you will never run out of Chance Methods that can help you!
Next Steps
Use this exercise to advance a stuck poem using the power of chance
Find a poem draft that’s in need of help.
Maybe you’re stuck for an ending, or a beginning. Or maybe the whole thing just feel a bit “flat.”Open the nearest book and choose 11 words at random from it. Write these down.
(I did this and got wagon, words, horse, moved, stage, rose, hat, nothing, peeped, down, go.)Assign each word a number from 2 to 12.
Roll two dice, and see what number they add up to. Circle the word on your list that corresponds to this number.
Repeat until you get 3 different words.
(I got stage, rose, and nothing.)Make up sentences that use either 2 or all 3 of these words. Let your imagination roam!
(For example: “The rose will not grow on stage. Nothing will grow on stage. The stage is a place where nothing rules, nothing roams. I stage myself, an opera of nothing. Nothing rose from within me, nothing rode on the highway past my wondering window, nothing was at any larval stage of growing when I sang my rose aria. A rose stages beauty. A rose stages nothing. At this stage of my aging I am a rose, I blossom in wrinkles.”)
Keep going until you run out of ideas.Look back at what you wrote and figure out a way to inject part of it into your poorly poem.
You don’t have to take a whole sentence, or even exact words—you can just take an idea. And it doesn’t even have to contain the original three words!
For example, I might use the idea of a “rose aria,” whatever that is; or a “wondering window.”If none of this works, try again! As all gamblers know, some you win, and some you lose.
