Lucid Writing Advice VIII

In music the basis of the tone floats on a bed of rhythm. Writing is a lot like music in that the writers wants a bed of rhythm floating beneath their words all the time.

A way to do this is to judge the size of a sentence. Readers’ eyes will quickly tire if you force them to read long, drawn out sentences one after another. And they will have the sense of being cheated from the story if you let them read short, nondescript ones as well.

In this case, their is no rhythm in the story, and the words all but a song that will not be listened to very often.

Look at the absence of rhythm below in using short sentences.

The sun was red. The grass was green. Birds chirped in the bright sky. Winds frolicked the trees. The air was dry and humid. She sat on the riverbank. White clouds rolled ahead of her.

I wouldn’t force myself to even read something like that. None of the sentences above even reached more that six words, and each one sounds just like the one before it.

Here is too many long sentences used:

He went out of the big house and looked down the road to see if he saw her coming around the bend of pine trees. The dirt road was empty except for a flock of pigeons playing tag in the hot summer evening air. He couldn’t help but curse because he didn’t see her yet. She would have a lot of explaining to do whenever or if she did arrive.

As much as actions, effective sentences can give the sense of something really happening. Notice the rhythm in the bottom passage because I have varied the word count of the sentences

The conductor hopped from the train with a smile. With one hand he helped the passengers unload, and with the other shook their hands. A man came to the doorway. The smile vanished. The conductor leaned in close, unless someone hear him.

You want your writing to have a feeling of Morse code: long, long, short, short, long, short, long, short...that’ll make your sentences more interesting. But of course that’s not a rule you have to follow closely, mainly so you can get the point.

A could way to do this is to use what is called concrete language. That simply means to use words that are more definite.

The sounds of the forest awoke him. This sentence is abstract.

The sound of monkeys and insects awoke him. This is concrete.

Concrete sentences are more poetical and a lot less general that abstract sentences.

Writers have been stressed that a sentence fragment is something to be avoided. Is it? Well, not entirely. Using a sentence fragment can had a staccato rhythm to your story. Look:

Hanna fought her way through the darkness of the corridors without a feeling of direction. She felt herself turning a corner. She thought their would at least be some light. There wasn’t any. Only darkness and infinity.