Writing practice: start writing The Cat in the Hat in blank verse
The sun was curtained by the stormy clouds,
Which on the saddened yard they dewed apace.
Entombed indoors sat we, old Noah’s kin,
That day which wet was doubled by its cold.
[once i get through the whole thing, then i’ll go back and turn it into a play in black verse – no description save stage directions, only speech]
Oppressed with weighty boredom, fixed a-chaired
Were we with ennui’s ever-present mass.
“Upon,” said I, “the stars enrobed in gray,
I wish our doing nought were something still.”
[not bad so far, keep going]
Upon our threshold, blocked by wetted guard
And frigid sentry, gazed we sans ball-play.
And there remained the floor beneath our chairs,
Our chairs beneath our nothing-doing selves.
[not bad still, this is really good practice. do this for a year and you might develop some real skill]
The stage direction circumstance did cue:
He sits, she sits, sits they, sits he, sits she.
Our melancholy o’er tides its banks,
Erodes our sandy shores of time’s expanse.
[ok, this would be the end of act 1 scene 1 in a play, or maybe just the end of act 1 if this were a multi-act play]
Then startle rapped its fist upon the door,
Its prattle rattled us up off the floor.
[maybe this would be the end of act 1, ending with a rhyming couplet…]
Across our threshold strode with Caesar’s air,
A biped feline, haberdashed with cap.
And with familiar tone, address, and stare,
Said he, “But wherefore sulk beneath your lap?
[i don’t want to get into rhyming right now, that’s more constraint than i want]
Untune yourselves from broadcasts wet and cold.
Think not of sullen ‘is’ but joyous ‘could’.
I know some tricky games and gamy tricks
Your mother, absent though, assents afar,”
He said with chilly cunning in his eyes
And words that cold ensnared than warm embraced.
[ok, not bad for the first day]