The opening master class at PubSense Summit featured a presentation by the stunning Rachel Bagby, creator of Dekaaz, a fascinating form of poetry — yes, poetry — that is catching fire in tweets across the twitterverse! She originated Dekaaz Facilitation®, based on an innovative poetic form that allows conference participants to galvanize the power of just 10 syllables to access their unique voices and distill vast amounts of information into sharable wisdom.
Why is this concept attractive to authors? Because it forces us to focus on the subject at hand and cook it down to its most potent message. A Dekaaz poem (Deka for 10 and A-Z for A to Z = Dekaaz) is just 10 syllables — two syllables in the first line, three in the second line and five in the third line.
Examples:
Authors / All About / Making Connections
Knowledge / And Action / Coming Together
Thank you / For the smile / You bring out in me
Write, speak / And share your / quotable wisdom
Pubsense / Avenues / Opportunity
Because they’re short and potent, these Dekaaz poems happen to make excellent tweets, too!
Several of the PubSense Summit participants got into the act and began a wall of Dekaaz poems. Want to see more? Head to Twitter and search #dekaaz #PubSense15 — you’ll see how quick, easy and clever they can be! (Shown above, a wall of Dekaaz entries from PubSense Summit participants)
Visit Rachel’s site at http://rachelbagby.com/dekaaz/ where you can submit a Dekaaz of your own!
Think you can describe your book in 10 syllables? Jot us a Dekaaz in your comment below and we’ll share your book and words on WWW’s Twitter page, too!
About Rachel
Rachel Bagby is an award-winning vocal artist, international speaker, recording artist and author passionate about mentoring women to unleash their voices as instruments of change. She has keynoted or presented in hundreds of venues on topics ranging from “Writing Lives, Writing Activism” for journalists to “Spirit in Action: The Heart and Soul of the Advocate” for lawyers, to “Voice Blessings,” part of Women, Love and Power with Marianne Williamson and Oprah Winfrey.
Rachel has penned numerous articles for leading publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Time, and Ms. Magazine and contributed chapters to several anthologies, such as The Columbia Documentary History of American Women Since 1941. Her first book was published by Harper SanFrancisco: Divine Daughters: Liberating the Power and Passion of Women’s Voices.
I love this idea. I’m a bit late in reading it but how much shorter a description can you get? I’ve heard of ten words or less, but syllables? Yikes. It is prose on a starvation diet. (get it?) Then I thought of movie descriptions.
Titanic: Romeo and Juliet on a boat.
Raiders of the Lost Ark: Indiana Jones: name for adventure.
Jaws: Giant shark terrorizes a small town.
Ooh, Katrina – I do believe you have a knack-aaz for Dek-aaz! Love these… 🙂
So much fun. I’m playing with one for my new novel 🙂
“Blue.” Three
Passages.
Fantasy finds truth.
Oooh, I like that, Kayce!
New novel. Would I lie To You? How our secrets follow us.
I love this and am going to share it with my clients. I often ask them to distill the essence of their plot to 25 words or less. Most of them can’t because they feel they have to go into copious detail. (These are also the same ones who say, “My plot doesn’t really start cooking until page 167…'”)
Am rising to the challenge to describe my current project, EXIT STRATEGY, in 10 syllables:
Scandal/Betrayal/An Epidemic
Wow. That was fun.
Isn’t it though?! Rachel is wonderful, too — the two of you need to connect, great ladies both!
For the Lowcountry mystery, Murder on Edisto, by C. Hope Clark
Back to
Edisto
Murder at the beach
For its sequel due out in the fall, Edisto Jinx.
A jinx
comes to life
on Edisto Beach
Outstanding, Hope! Was great having you back at PubSense Summit — always full of no-nonsense wisdom for fellow authors 🙂 Looking forward to Edisto Jinx — the Dekaaz is perfect and drew me right in…
Good ones:)
Here’s my dekaaz for Return to My Soul:
Painful
beautiful
it changed my whole life
Deserted Lands
Book 1 – ALL IS SILENCE
All die / All alone / Find a family
Book 2 – STRAIGHT INTO DARKNESS
Lizzie / Safe and sound / Escapes for freedom
Book 0 – TOILS AND SNARES
Anna / Fears for kids / Flees into the woods
I am currently having the artwork done for my upcoming children’s book “New Friend – True Friend”.
New friend
Proves he cares
And keeps a promise
Ruth Y. Nott
Author/Poet
Interesting concept – here is mine for the YA Paranormal mystery – Finally Home
Emma
Brings Kelly
And family home.
Now to come up with one for the second in the series – The Ties of Time and one for my thriller/suspense novel, Imogene: Innocence Lost, which are being worked on.
I’ll have to keep working on it but very interesting way to think of the stories. Super basic. E 🙂
Elysabeth Eldering
Author
FINALLY HOME, a Kelly Watson YA paranormal mystery
Fun! And how ’bout (for starters) Thriller! / Imogene / Innocence Lost – Book
Great Dekaaz for Emma’s book. Fab post about putting Dekaaz to work for authors! You’re quite the Dekaazen, Sister Shari. Big thanks!
You’re welcome and thank you, Sister Rachel – love the art form, love the Dekaaz we’re seeing everywhere… more the merrier, for sure! So glad you could join us