forced authorship is a catch - all literary condition for a whole legion of written forms or techniques that limit what or how authors or poets write by forcing them to use a specific solidifying of words , or to bring within a strict set of principle or parametric quantity . In simple terminal figure , poetry and even Song dynasty - writingcan be considered example of constrained writing , since their channel often need to rhyme or hold back a fixed routine of syllables or beat . Some forms of poetry are naturally more rigid then others — haikus , for instance , fit out their 17 syllables into the rigid rule 5–7–5 , while all but three of William Shakespeare ’s 154 sonnets conform to the rhyme scheme ABAB – CDCD – EFEF – GG — but at the most extreme , some forms of constrained writing are even more self - limiting and end up being very , veryconstrained indeed .
1. MANDATED VOCABULARY
One of the simplest human body of forced penning is limited or mandated vocabulary , wherein a writer either disallow certain intelligence or else limits themselves to a particular set or number of parole , or to words that fit a particular legal brief . Doug Nufer ’s fitly - titled2004 novelNever Again , for example , did n’t practice a exclusive Good Book more than once . Le Train de Nulle Part(The Train From Nowhere ) by the French novelist Michel Thaler did n’t contain a single verb . And the 2008 novellet me tell youby Paul Griffiths comprisedonly the 483 wordsspoken by Ophelia in Shakespeare’sHamlet .
But probably the most famous example of a body of work of mandate vocabulary is Dr. Seuss’sGreen Eggs And Ham(1960 ) , which waswritten in response to a betbetween Seuss and his publisher , Bennett Cerf , that he could not complete a story using no more than 50 different words . Seuss returned with a work using only the wordsa , am , and , anywhere , are , be , boat , box , car , could , dreary , do , eat on , eggs , fox , goat , unspoiled , green , ham , here , house , I , if , in , get , like , may , me , mouse , not , on , or , rain , Sam , say , see , so , thank , that , the , them , there , they , power train , tree , try , will , with , wouldandyou , and won the bet .
2. LIPOGRAM
A lipogram is a literary work in which a particular letter of the alphabet is purposely avoided . The trouble of writing lipogram obviously depends on the relative frequency of the varsity letter or letter in query ( after all , this verbal description entirely avoids using the letter zed without a job ) , but things get really tough when it ’s the most common missive in the language that are excluded .
None of the more than 50,000 words in Ernest Vincent Wright ’s novelGadsbycontain the letter E , for instance , and nor do any of the words in the French writer Georges Perec ’s 1969 novelLa Disparition — which was understand into English , still keep up Perec ’s original principle , by the writer and critic Gilbert Adair in 1995 and put out under the titleA Void . Perec later published a novella , Les Revenentes(1972 ) , incidentally , in which E was the only vowel sound .
3. RHOPALISM
Arhopalicpoem or time is one in which each consecutive word is one letter ( or , typically in poetry , one syllable ) longer than the previous one . Due to the fact that the personal pronoun , I , is only one letter long in English , myopic sentences that pursue this linguistic rule are passably well-situated to construct ( “ I am now here , ” “ I do her hair , ” “ I go and take the air there weekly ” ) but as the sentences get longer , rhopalism becomes an progressively tough rule to stick with . In 1965 , however , the linguist and author Dmitri Borgmann get along up with a stupefying 20 - word prison term that follow the linguistic rule of rhopalism absolutely :
4. ABECEDARIUS
Anabecedariusis a specific type of acrostic poem in which successive line or rhyme set out with each letter of the alphabet in order . Geoffrey Chaucer ’s 23 - verse line poem"A. B. C."—written in the fourteenth century , before J , U and W were even added to the English ABC’s — is among the mannequin ’s most famous examples .
5. PALINDROME
A palindrome is of course a word ( civil , radar , rotator ) or a phrase ( “ do n’t nod , ” “ was it a quat I picture ? ” ) that reads the same backwards as forwards . As a form of forced authorship , however , palindromes can be extended to extraordinary lengths : In his 2012 book , This Is A Book , the comedian and writer Demetri Martincompiled a 500 - word poem“about a guy wire in a cartoon strip club who becomes infatuate with two strippers , Tina and Stella . ” The entire verse form — which unfold “ Sexes . / Eh , the sexes . / Never even . Still , it ’s DNA.”—reads the same backwards and onwards .
6. TAUTOGRAM
A tautogram is an utmost form of alliteration in which all of the words in a judgment of conviction or phrase start with the same letter . Just like a palindrome , it ’s a form of restrain writing that can be taken to sinful extremes — as in the 1974 novelAlphabetical Africa , by the Austrian - endure American novelist Walter Abish .
Chapter 1 of the book contains only words beginning with A. In chapter 2 , words get down with B vitamin are introduced alongside the A - countersign , follow by C - words in chapter 3 , and so on , until chapter 26 is exclusively unrestrained . The remaining 26 chapters of the Holy Scripture then go to restrict the composition , first by removing the Z - words in chapter 27 , then the Y - news in chapter 28 , and so on until chapter 52 , which is again limited only to quarrel beginning with A.
7. PANGRAM
A pangram is a sentence that contains every letter of the alphabet . The most famous illustration is “ the quick brown fox leap over the otiose dog ” ( which is believed to have originally been insert in the 1880s as a script recitation , before being picked up by typists and amanuensis ) , while less familiar pangrams include “ the five boxing wizards jump speedily ” and “ jackdaws make out my big sphinx of vitreous silica . ”
“ The spry brown fox ” run to a total of 35 letter , although it can be reduced to 33 by replacing the first “ the ” with “ a. ” But the aim of pangram writing is manifestly to get as short a sentence as potential , with the ultimate end being a perfectly well-formed condemnation turn back just 26 letter . Understandably so - called “ unadulterated ” pangrams like these often terminate up comprise abbreviation , obscure words , and alternative spellings , buta handful of example have nevertheless been created , including “ Mr. Jock , boob tube quiz Ph.D. , bags few lynx ” and “ cwm fjord - bank glyphs vext quiz ” ( acwmbeing a Welsh vale , andvextbeing an old spelling ofvexed ) .
8. PILISH
Pilish is an sinful form of cumber penning that straddles the bound between language and mathematics : Pilish literature is written in such a way that the number of letter in each serial word is equal to the successive decimal places of pi , 3.14159265359 …
The first few number of pican be memorizedusing the mnemonic “ How I wish I could calculate pi , ” whileextra decimal placescan be added by memorise ever longer condemnation ( “ How I desire a beverage , alcoholic of course , after the grueling lectures involving quantum mechanics ” guide shamus to its fourteenth decimal property ) . But as a form of strained writing , Pilish was taken to an extremum by the American mathematician Mike Keith in his 1996 short storyCadaeic Cadenza , which comprises 3835 words all following the decimal sequence of principal investigator ( 0s are words 10 letters long ) . As if that were n’t mindboggling enough , in2010 Keith published the novellaNot A Wake — which push that sum to 10,000 .
