How to Write an Assonance
Assonance can provide simple prose with poetic rhythm. Using assonance is rather simple:
- Choose words with the same vowel sounds.
- Place those words together in a sentence.
For example, let’s say you have a frustrating, loud sibling named Dave. You want to harshly describe him by converting normal sentences into sentences using assonance:
- Normal sentence:
Dave frustrates me. He’s annoying, loud, and clingy. He plays his music too loud and won’t give me my privacy.
There are already cases of assonance in this sentence which can be used: Dave, frustrate and play, share vowel sounds. Loud has assonance with words such as how, out, and house. These cases of assonance can be increased and placed alongside one another:
- Sentence with Assonance:
Dave plays all day long and frustrates me a lot! He’s too loud. I don’t known how to kick him out of the house!
Assonance of Dave, plays, day, and frustrate provide this line with rhythm. Loud, how, out, and house further this rhythmic beat with repetition of a different vowel sound.
Since there are many vowel sounds, there are many ways to provide a sentence with assonance. Here is another way of providing the same sentence with assonance:
- Sentence with Assonance:
Dave is annoying with his ploys for attention and boy do I wish he’d find something quiet to do inside instead.
Like the previous sentence, this sentence gains rhythm with assonance. The type of assonance is different, though: annoying, ploys, and boy share vowel sounds, while find, quiet, and inside share another vowel sound.
When to Use Assonance
Assonance is used by many poets, rappers, and writers to reflect the intention, subject, and mood of the work through sound. Assonance may be used to provide lines with rhythm and unity. More advanced uses of assonance use the repetition of vowel sounds to invoke a certain feeling or mood in the poem. For example, nice-sounding vowels paired with soft consonants such as “Soft silk wings sit on the windowsill” invoke a calm or peaceful feeling. Conversely, harsh vowel sounds combined with hard consonants can invoke quite the opposite feeling: “We thrash and bat about, pounding on the ground.”