Limericks 101

Limericks are awesome!!

I really enjoy writing limericks. They are actually surprisingly difficult to make, but once you get the hang of it it's not too bad.

Here are some examples of limericks. They are mostly quite well known ones.

There once was a young lady named Bright

Whose speed was much faster than light

She set out one day

In a relative way

And returned on the previous night

-Anonymous

There was a young lady of Niger

who smiled as she rode on a tiger;

They returned from the ride

with the lady inside,

and the smile on the face of the tiger.

-attributed to Edward Lear and William Monkhouse

A painter, who lived in Great Britain,

Interrupted two girls with their knittin'

He said, with a sigh,

"That park bench--well I

Just painted it, right where you're sittin.'"

-Anonymous

A flea and a fly in a flue

Were imprisoned, so what could they do?

Said the fly, "let us flee!"

"Let us fly!" said the flea.

So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

—Ogden Nash

So, how do you write a limerick? 

Well, you start off with a first line. That's always a good idea. The last word should be one that you can rhyme with easily [e.g. flue, Bright, smile, dot etc.] Keeping the first line to around eight or nine syllables is a good idea. Ten or more can get messy.

So here's my example first line. 

A king renowned for insanity

Now we need a second line. The second line needs to rhyme with the first line. [e.g. flue/do, Bright/light, smile/while, dot/not etc]

First and second line smushed together:

A king renowned for insanity

Across the broad reach of humanity

Great! It's coming along nicely! The next thing we need are third and fourth lines.

These lines should rhyme with each other, but not with the first or second lines. They should be complete different rhymes. 

Here we go:

A king renowned for insanity

Across the broad reach of humanity

Instigated this deception

(Which was an awful misconception)

Now we just need to think of a last line. This fifth line should rhyme with both the first and the second.

A king renowned for insanity

Across the broad reach of humanity

Instigated this deception

(Which was an awful misconception)

To feed his egregious vanity.

So there you go! We have our limerick! (Yes, I did write that limerick while I was doing this blog post. Do you like it?)

Let me know in the comments how yours turned out. :D I can't wait!