Basic craft : Near rhyme

There are several sorts of combinations of sound that can take the place of rhyme. These include imperfect rhyme (spot - parrot), unaccented rhyme (butter - mother), half-rhyme (down - drowning), dissonant rhyme (bike - fight), assonance or vowel rhyme, alliteration or consonant rhyme and consonance. The easiest to play with is one of the oldest devices, alliteration.

Alliteration: Time to twist the tongue

Players pick a letter .., a personal letter, perhaps the initial of their name .. and try to write the longest sentence in which every word starts with that letter. The sentence should make sense even if it is not sensible. A good way of building such a sentence is to first construct a core phrase:

NOUN  DOGS
VERB  DESTROY
NOUN  DINOSAURS

and then surround each of the words in the phrase with adjectives and adverbs, then lengthen it by conjunction and preposition and build up supplementary phrases:

Dirty dreaming DOGS dizzily drunkenly DESTROY dangerous damp dreary DINOSAURS down disgustingly damp dungeons during dismal December days.

It will help if a first, example, sentence is constructed by the players on a blackboard or large sheet of paper. The finished sentence, and subsequent individual ones, can be written on long strips of paper and hung as banners, or rolled out as carpets.


A combination of alliteration with a version of consequences.

Players contribute two alliterating adjectives and a noun, and a further adverb alliterating with a final word, as in:

"A ragged raving robin merrily MET
eight elegant elephants incredibly IN
the wrecked red room and sweetly SAID
'What wobbly wonders with scaley SKIN'."

It can be helpful to ask players to start by deciding on the four words that end lines. This is only to give them a push and a structure, they should not feel bound by the first choice if it prevents a better work.
wave - an example of extended alliteration

For further information on this sort of game click on games listed under BASIC CRAFT in the INDEX side bar.