Free Sonnet Generator
Generate a fourteen-line sonnet in iambic pentameter, with a genuine volta at line nine and a closing couplet that lands.
Optional
14 lines, iambic pentameter
Should it rhyme?ABAB, set by form
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What is a sonnet?
Fourteen lines, ten syllables each, and an argument that turns. The sonnet survives because the length is exactly right for holding a single idea up to the light, changing your mind about it, and saying so before the reader gets restless.
The rules, exactly
- Exactly 14 lines in iambic pentameter (ten syllables per line, alternating unstressed and stressed).
- Use the Shakespearean scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG unless another is requested.
- Place a volta, a turn in argument or feeling, at line 9.
- End on the couplet with a resolution or a reversal.
- Lines
- 14
- Rhyme
- ABAB
Where it comes from
Invented in thirteenth-century Sicily, refined by Petrarch, and reshaped in English by Wyatt, Surrey and Shakespeare. The English version trades Petrarch's octave and sestet for three quatrains and a couplet, which moves the turn later and gives the ending more snap.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate.