Constrained writing

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Constrained writing is a literary technique in which the writer is bound by some condition that forbids certain things or imposes a pattern.

The most common constrained forms of writing are strict restrictions in vocabulary, e.g. Basic English, E-Prime, defining vocabulary for dictionaries, and other limited vocabularies for teaching English as a Second Language or to children. This is not generally what is meant by 'constrained writing' in the literary sense, which is motivated by more aesthetic concerns. For example:

• a letter (commonly e or o) is outlawed, making a lipogram;
• palindromes, such as the word "radar", read the same both ways;
• alliterativess, in which every word must start with the same letter (or subset of letters; see Alphabetical Africa)
• acrostics;
• reverse-lipograms (each word must contain a particular letter);
• Ander-Saxon;
• anagrams;
• aleatory (where the reader supplies a random input);
• Haiku, Japanese poem;
• Chinese poetry;
• Dui lian, Chinese couplet (對聯).

The Oulipo group is a gathering of writers who use such techniques. The Outrapo group use theatrical constraints.

External link

• "Poe, E.: Near a Raven" - a retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" in which the lengths of words are the values of the digits in pi; composed by Mike Keith

• "Constrained.org" - a community based website for constrained literature and constrained stories.