Rhythm & Flow

This course is slowly moving towards bigger and more “advanced” elements of prose. Rhythm and Flow are topics that the beginning writer would probably just ignore, and that’s fine. Focus on getting a readable story on the page first.

Once you’re comfortable doing that, however, you want to make the writing sing! You want to add that little extra that makes it stand out. You want to make sure the reader never has to reread a sentence, never fails to imagine the picture you painted, is never taken out of the flow. You want the prose to be consistently interesting and fun.

This chapter explains my best techniques for accomplishing this.

Metrum

What is “rhythm”? Well, it’s a repeating pattern. When you listen to the drums in a pop/rock song, you’ll notice they create rhythm by playing the exact same thing over and over, every bar. If they were to constantly hit random parts of the drum kit, there wouldn’t be a rhythm you can feel.

The same thing can be applied to prose. Whereas music has beats and notes, prose has syllables that can either be stressed or unstressed!

For example, the word “computer” stresses the syllable “pu”. The word “away” stresses “way”. Single syllable words can be stressed or unstressed, depending on what you choose.

We call this a metrum (or meter).

A metrum is a simple “rule” that the syllables in your line must follow.

If you listen to a lot of music, and especially if you make music yourself, you’ll naturally have a good ear for this. Again, I don’t want you to memorize such rules and consciously apply them to every line. It would be exhausting and overwhelming!

Instead, once in a while, take a few crucial lines and try to apply a meter to them. Over time, this practice will seep into your brain and cause you to subconsciously come up with prose that follows such rules.

So, how does it work?

• You invent a pattern.
• This pattern tells you how many syllables the line can have. (For example, if the pattern has length three, the number of syllables in your sentence must be a multiple of three.)
• But also where the stressed syllables should fall.

An example

A very simple pattern is just “yes no” (stressed unstressed).

• The line should have a number of syllables that’s a multiple of two. (Otherwise the pattern won’t fit.)
• And any time the pattern repeats, the first syllable should be stressed.

A line that does not fit would be: “Keep your hands off of my computer!”

A line following the metrum would be: “Stay away from my computer!”

Now, this is a bit subjective, but I think the second line reads much more easily.

Another line that does not fit: “Don’t pretend like you know everything, Tom!”

And now a version that does fit: “Don’t pretend your knowledge has no bound, Tom!”

A visual example

Some people have an easier time understanding this idea when they visualize the metrum. See the image below.

Ladder of Abstraction

In the earlier chapter Pyramid of Abstraction, I explained the difference between concrete and abstract language. I also explained how you generally want to start with concrete first and abstract later.

On a smaller scale (paragraphs, parts of a scene), however, it turns more into a ladder of abstraction. On the low end, you have very specific and concrete language. Higher up the ladder, you have sweeping and general statements.

As you edit your prose, you constantly want to climb up and down the ladder.

Just like you want to vary your sentence length and structure, you want to vary how concrete or abstract your statements are.

You’ve been giving very specific details for a while? Switch to more abstract language.

You’ve just given some difficult philosophical statements? Back off and switch to small, physical details.

Imagine somebody giving a speech or lecture. If they were talking at the same volume, pitch and speed all the time—that would get pretty boring wouldn’t it? If two or three sentences were spoken in the exact same way, that would be fine. But more of that, and the speech loses its rhythm and becomes a blur of words.

In that sense, going back and forth between levels of abstraction also makes the text more readable, much in the same way punctuation does.

Keep a focus

I don’t know if you can call this a “mistake”, but it certainly annoys me when I read novels: writers who keep changing focus all the time. They write a few paragraphs in the current time, then immediately jump to a memory, back to current time, flashback, to a different problem entirely, and so forth. Usually the scenes are really short as well.

This is jarring, hard to read, and breaks immersion. It feels like a first draft: the writer just wanted to get their jumble of thoughts on the page … but never actually rearranged the pieces to flow more easily.

Yes, add variation and switch your focus regularly. But do keep a focus on one thing for longer periods of time!

If you notice you have ten paragraphs about a topic scattered across two chapters, consider consolidating them into one focused moment.

If you keep interrupting your story for flashbacks and memories, consider actually telling those flashbacks/memories as their own scene (at the moment they happened).

If something is important enough to be mentioned several times (even in short spurts), it’s probably important enough to get the spotlight for a longer period of time. If not, cut it entirely.

This is another reason why revision is so important! Your first draft will surely lack focus and have puzzle pieces scattered around. When revising, pull related topics together to make sure you at least keep focus on the same problem or theme for a few pages.

Consistency

A subtle prose mistake is to be inconsistent with how you phrase things. As somebody consumes your prose, you’re basically teaching them how to read your prose. You’re showing the sentence structures you like to employ, the words you like to use, in what situations you reach for a trope, and so forth.

Once you’ve shown this, it’s a bit uncomfortable and jarring to (accidentally) break it.

Sure, you can evolve and change your writing style, but preferably not at random, within the same book ;)

That’s the first (slightly obvious) tip: be consistent with your writing style.

This is a vague tip, however, that completely depends on your writing style. A more specific one that can help most writers is to look at this on a smaller scale: the level of a single sentence or paragraph.

If one part of your sentence follows a certain “structure” to phrase things, you want the other part to use the same structure.

Similarly, if your paragraph starts with a certain type of phrase, it can be really satisfying to end with the same type of phrase (but perhaps slightly changed). Such consistency (through symmetry) gives a nice closure and flow.

You will find many of these tips on rhythm in speech writing. Study famous speeches to see all this in action and learn from it.

Tropes

These three tropes felt out of place in the previous chapter (which was also growing quite long). They don’t really emphasize, or exaggerate, or add information, or anything like that.

They just make things sound better. They just make the prose read more smoothly, more like a poem or a song. Using them regularly will make your prose pop just a little more.

Alliteration

Starting multiple words with the same letter. Best when used on only two words right next to each other, or three or four throughout the sentence. Can easily be overdone.

Assonance

Using the same vowel sounds. It’s a weakened form of rhyming, which is often used well in songs, but goes unnoticed in writing. Don’t think that means that it doesn’t enhance your writing—just that a reader needs to speak the words in his head to find the rhythm.

Onomatopoeia

A word that phonetically imitates, resembles or suggests the source of the sound that it describes. Basically, reading the word makes you think or feel its meaning, rather than simply remembering the meaning and reading on. Using these can sometimes look childish, but usually work to your advantage.