Florante at Laura is written in a literary form called Awit, a word which in its present usage means "song". But the literary form called Awit is a poetic form which has the following characteristics:
1. 4 lines per stanza;
2. 12 syllables per line;
3. a rhyme scheme of AAAA (in the Tagalog manner of rhyming described by José Rizal in Tagalische Verskunst);
4. a slight pause on the sixth syllable;
5. each stanza is usually a complete grammatically-correct sentence;
6. each stanza is full of figures of speech (according to Fernando Monleon, Balagtas used 28 types in 395 instances throughout the poem);
7. (according to the tradition during Balagtas' time,) the author remained anonymous,
8. he/she offered his/her poem to Maria Asuncion "Selya" Rivera (a tradition which Balagtas built upon in Kay Celia); and
9. he/she asked for the reader's pardon (which Balagtas does very confidently in Sa Babasa Nito).