Constrained Writing

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

Constraints are very common in poetry, which often requires the writer to use a particular verse form.

The most common constrained forms of writing are strict restrictions in vocabulary, e.g. Basic English, copula-free text, 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:

• Lipogram: a letter (commonly e or o) is outlawed.
• Palindromes, such as the word “radar”, read the same forwards and backwards.
• Pilish, where the lengths of consecutive words match the digits of the number π.
• Alliteratives, in which every word must start with the same letter (or subset of letters; see Alphabetical Africa).
• Acrostics: first letter of each word/sentence/paragraph forms a word or sentence.
• Reverse-lipograms: each word must contain a particular letter.
• Twiction: espoused as a specifically constrained form of microfiction where a story or poem is exactly one hundred and forty characters long.
• Anglish, favouring Anglo-Saxon words over Greek and Roman words.
• Anagrams, words or sentences formed by rearranging the letters of another.
• Aleatory, where the reader supplies a random input.
• Chaterism Where the length of words in a phrase or sentence increase or decrease in a uniform, mathematical way as in "I am the best Greek bowler running", or "hindering whatever tactics appear".
• Univocalic poetry, using only one vowel.
• Bilingual homophonous poetry, where the poem makes sense in two different languages at the same time, thus constituting two simultaneous homophonous poems.
• One syllable article, a form unique to Chinese literature, using many characters all of which are homophones; the result looks sensible as writing but is incomprehensible when read aloud.
• Limitations in punctuation, such as Peter Carey's book True History of the Kelly Gang, which features no commas.
• Mandated vocabulary, where the writer must include specific words, chosen a priori, along with the writer's own freely chosen words (for example, Quadrivial Quandary, a website that solicits individual sentences containing all four words in a daily selection).

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