Poems and songs aren’t the only things with rhythm, novels and short stories have it too.
Let’s go over three tips for writing with rhythm, look at some examples, then practice together!
During the last stream, the subscribers voted that we go over how to write with rhythm.
Watch a short version of the stream here or scroll down for what we wrote.
How to Write With Rhythm
- When we think rhythm, we usually think of music and poetry
- But stories/novels have rhythm too! It’s just more subtle
- So today let’s go over three things to keep in mind when writing, so that your stories flow with a satisfying rhythm rather than reading like a bumpy ride
#1. Varying Up Sentence Lengths
- The most important tip in writing with rhythm is to make sure that nearly every sentence is different in length from the ones before it and after it
- If you have two or more sentences in a row that are a similar length, the writing will sound robotic:
He walked into the room. Something caught his attention. It was the bird on the floor. The feathers were sparkling bright. He wondered why. Then he looked up. Sunlight poured through the window. It hit the bird just right. That’s what made it glitter. That’s what made her beautiful.
- Let’s see what it looks like by varying up sentence length:
He walked into the room and something caught his attention. The bird on the floor. Its feathers were sparkling bright and he wondered why, then he looked up. Sunlight poured through the window, hitting the bird just right, making it glitter. Making her beautiful.
- It’s not just the length of the sentence, but the number of punctuation breaks too
- Sentences that have similar number of commas will feel the same, even if they’re different lengths, making the writing sound repetitive:
When I first saw bird-girl, I didn’t know what to think. She was so pretty, and I was so pathetic. Her eyes were fierce, and her beak was sharp. I desperately wanted to say something to her, but I didn’t know how to speak Bird. My loss, her gain. I will never know the joy of dating bird-girl, and she’ll never have to put up with me.
- You want your writing to feel like a pair of lungs, breathing in shorter sentences, and breathing out longer ones
- Typically longer sentences are more relaxed/fluid and shorter sentences are more tense/punchy, but having too many of either in a row will be annoying for the reader
- And don’t be scared of having fragments for short sentences! There’s nothing wrong with:
I hate him. So. Much. Every time I see him I want to punch him in the stomach so hard that I grab onto his intestines and yank it around him like a sticky, bloody rope. Imagining that. Fantasizing that. It’s what gets me through my date with bird-boy.
#2. Changing Up Words That Start Sentences/Paragraphs
- Even if you have different sentence lengths, they’re still going to sound the same if they all start with the same word:
She finally did it. She woke up early just to make sure it was possible. She went downstairs to the kitchen, turned on the stove, and got to work. She stirred the special ingredient into the pancake batter while chuckling to herself. She struggled not to be too loud. She had to stay silent, after all. She didn’t want to wake him up before it was ready. She would have her revenge against bird-boy.
- Despite having varying sentence lengths, it still feels repetitive to read, like you’re being snapped back to the same point every sentence
- Let’s see if we can make it smoother just by changing up the first words and fixing up the ripple effects from there:
She finally did it. Just to make sure it was possible, she woke up early, went downstairs to the kitchen, turned on the stove, and got to work. Stirring the special ingredient into the pancake batter. Chuckling to herself. Her only struggle was to not be too loud. Silence was of the utmost importance, after all, to make sure he didn’t wake up before it was ready. Today, she would have her revenge. Against bird-boy.
#3. Giving Words Space to Breathe
- When we talk, we have a natural rhythm to our words, since we can hear what we’re saying
- But when we write, we write in silence, and quite often that natural rhythm gets ignored when we try to convey too much information — things that make sense in our brains but don’t make sense in the moment of the story
- It may sound stupid, but reading aloud will let you spot sections that feel unnatural so you can clean them up
BAD: He was an old pal of mine with frizzy long dark hair.
BETTER: He was an old pal of mine with dark, frizzy hair.
GOOD: He was an old pal of mine, with the same dark, frizzy hair that earned him the nickname “pube-head” back in high school.
BAD: On the right side of the room was an alligator, on the left side was a crocodile, and in the middle was a tortoise.
GOOD: In the middle of the room was a tortoise, surrounded by a hungry alligator and crocodile.
BAD: I jumped off of the ledge and just barely landed on the windowsill, almost losing my grip. Only able to hear whispers that came from inside, I also leaned in closer and then listened to them.
GOOD: I jumped off the ledge and landed on the windowsill. Leaning in close, I listened to the whispers from inside.
- For a real-life example, the opening to Fifty Shades of Grey:
I scowl with frustration at myself in the mirror. Damn my hair — it just won’t behave, and damn Katherine Kavanagh for being ill and subjecting me to this ordeal. I should be studying for my final exams, which are next week, yet here I am trying to brush my hair into submission. I must not sleep with it wet. I must not sleep with it wet. Reciting this mantra several times, I attempt, once more, to bring it under control with a brush. I roll my eyes in exasperation and gaze at the pale, brown-haired girl with blue eyes too big for her face staring back at me, and give up. My only option is to restrain my wayward hair in a ponytail and hope that I look semi-presentable.
- Reading that aloud, it’s a mess
- There’s too much information crammed in, and there’s too many things that people would never naturally say, both of which you can feel when you read it aloud
- Let’s change it up to give it more natural rhythms:
Damn my hair. It just won’t behave. Right now I should be studying for my final exams, yet here I am trying to brush the tangled mess on top of my head into submission.
If only I’d listened to my own advice. I must not sleep with wet hair. I must not sleep with wet hair. And yet, last night, I’d slept with wet hair. Classic Anna.
Once more, I attempt to bring it under control with a brush. Scrape, crunch, twang. All I manage is to make the brown nest even more tangled than it already was. Exasperated and empty, I give up. With a quick slip into a ponytail and a sigh of defeat, I hope that I look semi-presentable. Or at least that I hadn’t stuck my finger in a socket.
- The rewrite isn’t perfect, but it gets rid of those awkward bits and fills in the ripple effects of those changes
- Any time something feels off when you read it out loud, don’t ignore it, change it!
Examples
- Take a look at these random exceprts from books
- Note how no two sentences in a row start with the same word, there’s a good flow of long/short sentences, and the information is nice and spread out
- Be sure to check out the video for more analysis of them!
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
The men at the bar seemed almost surprised to see Kote standing there. They’d been coming to the Waystone every Felling night for months, and Kote had never interjected anything of his own before. Not that you could expect anything else, really. He’d only been in town for a year or so. He was still a stranger. The smith’s prentice had lived here since he was eleven, and he was still referred to as “that Rannish boy,” as if Rannish were some foreign country and not a town less than thirty miles away.
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
We laughed. Then we both flushed pink in our cheeks in the same spot. It was the kind of raunchy, unsisterly joke that Go enjoyed tossing like a grenade. It was also the reason why, in high school, there were always rumors that we secretly screwed. Twincest. We were too tight: our inside jokes, our edge-of-the-party whispers. I’m pretty sure I don’t need to say this, but you are not Go, you might misconstrue, so I will: My sister and I have never screwed or even thought of screwing. We just really like each other.
After that, chat voted that we practice writing with rhythm, using this image as a prompt:
Here’s what we came up with:
Watty the watermelon looked around at the people on board the cruise ship, and decided he didn’t want to be eaten by any of them. Fat. Scrawny. Jaws made of Play-Doh. Not one of them worthy of what he had to offer. The mere thought of them eating his glorious, glimmering fruit made his seeds churn.
So he decided to roll away.
When the chefs weren’t looking, Watty wobbled atop the silver serving cart and tumbled to the carpeted floor. He whirled and wheeled out the door to the deck of the ship, right up to the edge of the guardrail. With a gap just big enough for him. Then, he plummeted.
Splash! Watty landed rind-first in the salty water, floating along the briny waves. The cruise ship faded smaller and smaller. Finally he was alone with only his juicy body, and his new mission. To find a home.
It wasn’t long before Watty first encountered somebody else. A pair of dolphins, swimming around him in circles. They bonked him with their strong bottle noses, passing him back and forth like a ball, clicking and squeaking with joy. Their prowess was practically palpable!
For a moment, Watty thought he had found what he was looking for. But the dolphins didn’t stay. They grew tired of the game, swam away, and Watty was alone again.
He floated atop the gently blowing waves until something thin and hard came up from below him. A net. It was filled with writhing fish, pulled up high into the sky, until everything was dropped in a slimy pile on the deck of another boat. This one with long-bearded, thick-fingered sailormen.
For a moment, Watty thought he had found what he was looking for. But the sailormen didn’t keep him for long. One of them picked him up with his powerful palms, and just as Watty felt his juices flowing inside, the sailor chucked him overboard.
Splash. Again, alone in the ocean.
Watty floated for days and days, not meeting anyone else. No fish. No boats. Only a bright line in the distance that slowly grew larger as he floated toward it, eventually turning into a beach.
With the unceremonious push of a wave, Watty rolled onto the sandy shore. This was the worst place he’d been yet. All around him were more people just like the cruise ship. Flabby. Skeletal. Pale as sacks of flour. The thought of them biting into his soft, moist fruit really got his rind in a bind.
One of them came over. Watty couldn’t even bear to look. The man picked him up and brushed off the sand, effortlessly holding him with his strong, muscular arms.
Staring at him through his black sunglasses. Pressing him against his bulging abs. Bathing him in the shadow of an adonis.
For a moment, Watty thought he had found what he was looking for. A home. A forever home. Inside the stomach of a true alpha.
The man cracked Watty in half with his bare hands. The ecstasy shot through him in one massive tremor, rippling through his ripe-red innards, now exposed and glistening under the hot summer sun.
He bit right into Watty’s skin, not even going for the sparkling fruit, but starting with the rough outer rind. It was then that Watty saw the man’s jaw. A far cry from the Play-Doh curves of the cruise ship, this was chiseled from a slab of hardened man-meat. Honed by ripping apart tough steaks, crunching on carrots, tearing through jerky. And of course, biting watermelons rind-first.
Watty could think of no greater honor than to be devoured by such a specimen. He would gladly give his nutrients away. A hundred times over, if he could!
But then it all came crashing down. The man dropped Watty to the ground. All the bliss, all the moist fruit ready to be eaten, doused in a thick layer of sand. Watty could only lie there, shocked to silence, as other buff dudes joined the one with rind and red around his lips.
“Bro!” one of them said. “I can’t believe you actually bit into that.”
He wiped his mouth. “I’m not one to step down from a dare. Now, I believe you owe me five bucks.”
The last thing Watty saw as everything went dark was a Lincoln passed between fingers. And then the birds came.
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Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: FreePhotoMuscle