Formal Fluency: Cacophonic Chaos

Details

“That's one thing I hate! All the noise, noise, noise, noise!” cried the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Well, no offense to the Grinch, but that’s what I want. All the grating, the cracking, the petrifying sound. Jangling, banging, cacophonous. Give me discord, discomfort, and dissonance!

Cacophony and dissonance are not usually what poets aim for in their writing. Cacophony is the harsh mixture of sound, generally with the hard consontant sounds: c, g, p, k, and x. It makes you trip over the words. Dissonance avoids harmony; it clashes with the sounds it makes and avoids patterns in vowel sounds. Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky is an excellent example of cacophony and dissonance fighting together to make the reader stumble.

Speed also plays a role. Cacophony can be used to increase the speed of the poem, bringing tension and conflict in a slow build as it does with the sonnet used as an example in the link below, or from the beginning as it does in Jabberwocky.

For a little more information on using cacophony and dissonance, try here.

What I am looking for:

• Tension (gradually building or immediate)
• Harsh consonants
• Off-pattern vowel sounds
• Syllable count per line doesn’t matter, just make sure if you’re pairing lines that the syllable counts match up

Unleash hell on harmony. Post your noise to the site using the contest tag by Friday, June 15th to be considered.

Winning entries

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Prizes

Rules

• Entries must be received before midnight of Friday, June 15th (UTC time) and the winner will be announced within one week of that date.

• Entries must highlight cacophony and dissonance as described above.

• Part of our mini-contests is sharing what you've learned: although it's not required, we'd appreciate it if you come weigh in on the group discussion thread here.

• Only one entry per member, please. Multiple entries will all be disqualified.

• Work must have Public visibility on Scribophile until winners are announced.

• Winners must have a valid Paypal account, or we won't be able to send the prize money!

Submission guidelines

• To enter the contest, post your work on Scribophile and check the box that says "Enter this work into the Formal Fluency Cacophonic Chaos Contest." Your work will automatically be considered. The checkbox will be visible until the contest deadline, which is in UTC time.

• Entry is free, but you'll need karma points to post your work. You can earn karma points by writing critiques of work by other members.