How to Write a Poem: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners
This article is for: Complete Beginners!
“How can I possibly write a poem?!”
If you’re reading this, you have probably asked yourself this question—perhaps many times!
Maybe you’ve always wanted to write poetry, but haven’t had the confidence to begin. Maybe you’ve just suddenly gotten the urge to write a poem, but don’t know how to start. Perhaps you’ve read a poem you really love, and wish you could make one yourself, but feel lost. Or perhaps you have to write one, for an assignment or a special occasion. and are stuck!
At times like these, poetry may seem just incredibly difficult.
If you feel like this—like giving up and never even trying to write a poem—STOP!
I am here to give you some very good news:
If you can use words, you can make a poem—and it can be easy!
Don’t believe me? It’s really true! All you have to do is keep reading, because:
Here is my step-by-step guide that you can use to write a poem—one you love and are proud of!
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8 Steps To Better Poems
How can poetry be easy?!
OK, I confess—poetry can be complicated.
There really are a ton of skills and forms and techniques, and it could take a lifetime to master them all. (I’ve been writing for decades and I’m still learning.)
But here’s the big secret that most people don’t realize:
Poetry is only as hard as you make it—which means you can make it not hard!
My favorite definition of poetry was given to me by a 13-year-old school student. In response to my question, “What is poetry?” he said, “Poetry is some words that mean something.”
And honestly, that’s all you need to start.
Later on you can learn how to make your poems more complex, if you want. But you don’t need to—especially not to begin with. In fact, I think the best way to begin is:
Just get writing, and find out how fun it can be!
The Step-by-Step Process
For some people, “Just write!” is all they need to hear to start writing freely and happily.
Most people, though, appreciate a little more structured guidance than that!
So here’s a process you can go through that will give you a poem at the end of it.
It will show you how to:
Find an idea
Give it the ”shape” of a poem
Add a “turn,” so the poem seems to “say” something
Craft your language so that it has impact.
Step 1: Write some words
A poem is made of words, so we’d better start there. You can begin with almost any words, about anything—yes, even a shopping list can be the seed of a poem. But a simple and effective way to start is to:
Write down some notes (as prose, not poetry) about something you have noticed or seen recently.
When you make these notes, try to include a lot of details about what you saw, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted. But DON’T TRY TO MAKE THE WRITING “FANCY”: just use the first words that come to you.
For example, here’s something I experienced yesterday:
I went outside to the yard at lunchtime. I sat on the grass and moss next to the woods and read my book. As I did so, I heard occasional noises—rustles and crunches—from the brush/scrub area next to me. I thought it was a squirrel, because it usually is. Then after maybe 10 minutes, the noises grew much louder—and I looked up to see a young deer trot out of the bushes, and onto the grass. Its white tail was bright in the sun, and its light brown coat shone and rippled as it moved. In a couple of leaps, it was gone, into the woods and out of my sight.
When you’ve done this, add two other things to your words:
How you felt afterward.
Describe a memory that relates.
So in my example, I can add:
How I felt afterward: All that time the deer was right next to me, and I never knew. I felt sad I hadn't noticed it sooner, and watched it. But mainly it made me think how the world can give us beautiful surprise, provided we're alert for it.My connected memory: The color of the deer's coat made me think of the wooden jewellery box I made for my mother when I was about 12. I sawed the wood, sanded it, glued it together, stained it a light orange-brown, and screwed in a little silver clip for closing it. I was very proud when I gave it to her, and she seemed to like it. 40 years later, she still has it on her dresser.
These words you’ve written are going to be the foundation of your poem.
Step 2: Break the words into lines
One of the biggest differences between poetry and other kinds of writing is that poetry has more structure and “shape.”
You’re going to make your existing words look like poetry, by adding line breaks.
A “line break” is the place where one line of poetry ends, so another one can start.
They are surprisingly important, because:
They make the words in each line stand out, in a way that doesn’t happen in prose
They help to give the poem a “flow,” since the more line breaks you have, the slower it feels to readers.
Where should you put the line breaks?
Line breaks can go in all kinds of places, but for now, keep it simple:
Add a line break whenever there’s a new piece of information.
Sometimes this will mean breaking a line where a sentence ends, or where there’s other punctuation like a comma. But sometimes it will mean adding a line break in the middle of a sentence.
Here’s what my example looks like when I do that:
I went outside to the yard at lunchtime.
I sat on the grass and moss next to the woods
and read my book.
As I did so, I heard occasional noises—rustles and crunches—
from the brush/scrub area next to me.
I thought it was a squirrel, because it usually is.
Then after maybe 10 minutes, the noises grew much louder—
and I looked up to see a young deer
trot out of the bushes, and onto the grass.
Its white tail was bright in the sun,
and its light brown coat shone and rippled as it moved.
In a couple of leaps, it was gone,
into the woods and out of my sight.You can see that plenty of times I have broken the line where a sentence ends—like the first line, “I went outside to the yard at lunchtime.” But the second line ends with “next to the woods” and the sentence carries right on into the next line, “and read my book.”
Already this simple change makes the words feel more like a poem! The line breaks make the language seem more special—as though everything you’ve said deserves more attention now that it’s chopped up into smaller chunks.
Step 3: Cut out what you don’t need
Now we’ve added line breaks, each little bit of language we’ve used is under scrutiny. And some parts of what you originally wrote might now seem like they’re not contributing very much.
Now you’re going to take out (and/or rearrange) any parts that seem unnecessary, boring, or repetitive.
Try to think your way into the mind of someone who’s going to read your words. Which parts do they need, and which can you ditch?
In my example:
I’m not convinced that I need to tell my reader all the details of why and when I went outside, and what I read. So I’ll cut a lot of information from the first 3 lines.
I don’t need to say “As I did so” from line 4—it’s obvious that the noises happened while I was reading.
The word “occasional” in line 4 seems unnecessary.
I also don’t really need to say that “I heard” these noises, since it’s clear that it must have been me hearing them. So I’ll take that out, and add “came from” at the start of line 5.
I’ve said twice that I was “next to” something: either “the woods”: or the “scrub/brush” area. So I'll take out one of these.
I could shorten “because it usually is” to “as usual.”
And so on! Here’s my new draft with some things cut out:
I sat on the grass and moss
to read.
Noises—rustles and crunches—
came from the scrubby woods next to me.
I thought squirrel, as usual.
But the noises grew louder—
and a young deer
trotted onto the grass.
Its white tail was bright in the sun,
its light brown coat rippled as it moved.
In a couple of leaps, it was gone,
into the woods and out of my sight.That’s much better! As I read it, I don’t feel that I’ve lost any of the ideas from the first version, but the actual words are much tighter and more concise! This matters, because in poetry, we want to do as much as we can with as few words as possible.
Step 4: Add new parts, if you like
Now it’s time to think the other way around.
What’s missing from the poem so far, that readers might like to know? Add it!
In my example:
I feel it’s important to show that I was oblivious to the world around me as I read—happy, but oblivious! So I am going to add an extra sentence to line 2 to show that:
I sat on the grass and moss
to read. Warm sun soothed me
and I lost myself in the words.
Noises—rustles and crunches—
came from the scrubby woods next to me.
I thought squirrel, as usual.
But the noises grew louder—
and a young deer
trotted onto the grass.
Its white tail was bright in the sun,
its light brown coat rippled as it moved.
In a couple of leaps, it was gone,
into the woods and out of my sight.Step 5: Swap a few words over
When people start writing poetry, they often spend a lot of effort on finding the most impressive, poetic-sounding words to use.
This is usually a bad idea! It’s very important to make your poem sound natural and genuine—which means using your words, not ones that you’d never actually say or write!
However, there are times when you look at a word in a poem and feel that it’s boring. So the next step is:
If some words seem too plain, swap them for other ones—but only a small number!
In my poem, I don’t want to change very much. Maybe 3 words from the end:
“Trotted” in line 9 makes the deer’s appearance seem fairly ordinary. It would be more exciting if I said “sprang.”
I don’t much like “was bright” in line 10. I might swap this out for “shone.”
I could be more precise than saying “Moved” in line 11. I prefer “ran.”
New version:
I sat on the grass and moss
to read. Warm sun soothed me
and I lost myself in the words.
Noises—rustles and crunches—
came from the scrubby woods next to me.
I thought squirrel, as usual.
But the noises grew louder—
and a young deer
sprang onto the grass.
Its white tail shone in the sun,
its light brown coat rippled as it ran.
In a couple of leaps, it was gone,
into the woods and out of my sight.Step 6: Add a “Turn”
Every poem needs a turn—a moment where it goes in a different direction. (For why this is important, please see this article.). So now:
Add the memory you jotted down earlier. Make it a new stanza (i.e. verse).
Add this toward the end of what you’ve written, but not necessarily at the very end. Follow you hunch about where it feels right.
In my example, the memory of the wooden jewellery box is linked to the deer by the color of the deer’s coat, so I am going to add the box immediately after I write about that.
When you add the memory, repeat Steps 2, 3, 4, and 5 to make these new words as strong as the rest of what you’ve created.
Here’s my new draft after I did that:
I sat on the grass and moss
to read. Warm sun soothed me
and I lost myself in the words.
Noises—rustles and crunches—
came from the scrubby woods next to me.
I thought squirrel, as usual.
But the noises grew louder—
and a young deer
sprang onto the grass.
Its white tail shone in the sun,
its light brown coat rippled as it ran.
I thought of the jewellery box
I made for my mother when I was 12.
How I sawed the wood, sanded it, glued it together,
then stained it a light orange-brown,
and screwed in a little silver clip for closing.
When I gave it to her,
she seemed to like it.
40 years later, she still has it on her dresser.
In a couple of leaps, the deer was gone,
into the woods and out of my sight.Step 7: Add an Ending
Finishing a poem can be the hardest part of it, so don’t worry if this step is challenging! Just give it a go. (And later, you can look at a few articles on different ways to make endings: with an image, by tying up loose threads, or by stopping sooner.)
Use your “How you felt” notes to finish to the poem.
Most poems try to convey some kind of emotion, so let’s end this one by using your notes from earlier about how the event you observed made you feel.
However, this time, try to do two extra things:
Use as little of your notes on your feelings as you can. This is because emotion is better hinted at in a poem.
Also try to add something that ties into your memory as well!
My feelings notes were:
All that time the deer was right next to me, and I never knew. I felt sad I hadn't noticed it sooner, and watched it. But mainly it made me think how the world can give us beautiful surprise, provided we're alert for it.
Out of this, I decided to use only this much:
All that time, right next to me, beautiful surprise.
Then, to connect to the jewellery box, I decided to add something about places to keep beauty:
All that time, right next to me, beautiful surprise and where we keep it.
Here’s the new version:
I sat on the grass and moss
to read. Warm sun soothed me
and I lost myself in the words.
Noises—rustles and crunches—
came from the scrubby woods next to me.
I thought squirrel, as usual.
But the noises grew louder—
and a young deer
sprang onto the grass.
Its white tail shone in the sun,
its light brown coat rippled as it ran.
I thought of the jewellery box
I made for my mother when I was 12.
How I sawed the wood, sanded it, glued it together,
then stained it a light orange-brown,
and screwed in a little silver clip for closing.
When I gave it to her,
she seemed to like it.
40 years later, she still has it on her dresser.
In a couple of leaps, the deer was gone,
into the woods and out of my sight.
All that time, right next to me:
beautiful surprise, and where we keep it. Step 8: Find a Title
Titles are another step that many poets find very challenging, but for this poem, keep it simple:
Choose a snippet of words from your poem to be its title.
And don’t worry too much about it!
I’m going for “Beautiful Surprise,” because that seems to sum things up. So here’s my final poem:
BEAUTIFUL SURPRISE
I sat on the grass and moss
to read. Warm sun soothed me
and I lost myself in the words.
Noises—rustles and crunches—
came from the scrubby woods next to me.
I thought squirrel, as usual.
But the noises grew louder—
and a young deer
sprang onto the grass.
Its white tail shone in the sun,
its light brown coat rippled as it ran.
I thought of the jewellery box
I made for my mother when I was 12.
How I sawed the wood, sanded it, glued it together,
then stained it a light orange-brown,
and screwed in a little silver clip for closing.
When I gave it to her,
she seemed to like it.
40 years later, she still has it on her dresser.
In a couple of leaps, the deer was gone,
into the woods and out of my sight.
All that time, right next to me:
beautiful surprise, and where we keep it. Step 9: Bask in a Glow of Pride and Satisfaction!
I can’t prove this to you, but I promise you that I have made up all of my poem now, as I wrote this article (from 11am to 1:30pm on a Tuesday morning in August!), following exactly the steps I’ve given you. So it works!
Of course I’ve had more experience than you, but remember:
Poetry is just some words that mean something, so give it your best shot, and don’t worry.
And whatever you make, be proud—because You did it! And no one else but you could have.
Next Steps
I hope you enjoyed making a poem! If you want to keep trying, here’s some advice:
Do this process more than one time.
Poetry is a skill, and like all skills, you get better at it with practice! So try it again, and see your second attempt improve.Read my free eBook 8 Steps to Better Poems.
This has lots of advice on things like poetic form, language, metaphors, and how to draft poem. So if you’re interested in keeping writing, it’s got some things that will help you. You can download it here!Avoid rhyme—for now.
Although it seems like child’s play, rhyme is difficult to do well, and easy to do badly! So I strongly suggest you avoid rhyme at first, until you’ve learned some other poetry tools. (But If you want to learn more about rhyme, see this article and this one.)Read poems! Lots of poems. And modern ones.
Reading is the best way to learn what’s possible in poetry—and to be inspired too! But do make sure you read recent poetry, not only old poetry. That way you’ll learn what poetry is now, rather than what it was 100 years ago or more.Try out different places to put the line breaks.
Changing line breaks and line lengths is one of the simplest but most powerful ways to redraft a poem. There’s more on this in 8 Steps. But you can also read these articles on Line Lengths: An overview, one on short lines, one on long lines, and one on mixed lines.Try one of the easier poetic forms.
The pantoum is a good one to start with, since its repetition helps you write it.
Sonnets can also be surprisingly accessible, provided you follow only the most basic rules! This article explains how to do that.
