Listening for rhythm

In dis­cus­sions about writ­ing there is often talk of a writer’s “Voice,” the voice of the nar­ra­tor, be it the author’s voice or the char­ac­ter who is relat­ing the tale. Not often men­tioned is the rhythm or cadence of a narrative.

What I am writ­ing about here is close to poet­ic usage, but not quite. A well writ­ten piece con­tains a nat­ur­al, con­sis­tent flow of words that car­ries, indeed pro­pels, the read­er for­ward. Chop­py, halt­ing prose, caus­es the read­er to stum­ble, so to speak. The Eng­lish lan­guage, with its immense vocab­u­lary, allows for infi­nite word choice, with vast vari­eties of syl­la­ble struc­ture. It also allows for great sim­plic­i­ty. But that word choice is cru­cial, because it has much to do with struc­tur­al rhythm.

Pick up an eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry nov­el, say by Sarah Field­ing, and com­pare it with the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry prose of Alcott, and then the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry writ­ing of Baum, or J.K. Rowl­ing (all writ­ers for young peo­ple)  and you will imme­di­ate­ly feel dif­fer­ent rhyth­mic structures.

And while there are these gen­er­al pat­terns of cadence for var­i­ous his­tor­i­cal peri­ods, I would sug­gest that each and every book, to be suc­cess­ful, requires its own rhythm.

The best way to sense this in your own work is to read it out loud. Read it to some­one, but lis­ten care­ful­ly for that rhythm. Have a pen­cil in hand, and when that rhythm breaks (and it will!) mark and then rewrite.

Be con­sis­tent, strength­en that rhythm, and you will have a bet­ter piece of writing.