WoLaLys For Dummies: A Tutorial

(Various new poetic forms -- i.e., the woLaLy, the to-’n’-froLaly, the mageek, the prosopogostichs, the bananagraffe and its split variant, the borrownym, the fauxmophone, the fifteener, the botchuLit, the haikucento, the runcibl'd spoonerism, the NightM.A.R.E. and the eclipsogram -- will be explained in a series of tutorials beginning with the one for the woLaLy appearing below.) 

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The woLaLy aka the word ladder lyric begins with the construction of a word ladder string. A word ladder is a sequence of words in which each word changes a single letter to form the word following it and in which the first and the last word have some interesting semantic relationship.  For the woLaLy a sequence is selected for having as many as possible if not all of its items rhyming pairs (or triplets), or one allowing such pairs (or triplets) to be constructed.

An example

REAL>>>FAKE 
 
REAL>SEAL>SEAS>SETS>METS>MATS>

MATE>SATE>SAME>LAME>LAKE>FAKE

real seal (seas) 

sets Mets

(mats) mate sate
same lame
lake fake

After selecting a word ladder sequence, a poem is composed in rhyming couplets (or triolets). Those words having no accompanying rhymes shall be incorporated into the interior of one line or another that positions them between the two items they fall between in the original string.

 
Another example

     Real Fake 

I favor animals who're real --
the manatee, the leopard seal --
who swim the seas in matching sets 
but won't bat cleanup for the Mets
or steal the mats of someone's mate,
their mattress hankerings to sate.
I hope my readers feel the same,
nor don't construe my notions lame.
(The animal whose home's a lake
I don't consider real, but fake.)