Rhythm by James Alan Gardner

7.8 Rhythm

<Previous  |  Top  |  Table of Contents  |  Next> Good prose pays attention to rhythm: the rhythm of the words and sentences. It's difficult to describe, but it's very real; writers with lousy rhythm are harder to read.
Sentences establish rhythm by their length and punctuation. Long languid sentences convey a different mood than short choppy ones. A short sentence that comes after several longer ones draws attention to itself—such sentences are often used as cappers to the preceding material, capping off the passage before going on to something new:

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I was just about to lock in the auto-pilot when the navigation screen flashed every color in the rainbow for three and a half seconds, turned fuzzy gray for a second after that, then went completely blank. Naturally, I hit the DIAGNOSTICS button. Nothing happened—for all I knew, the diagnostic suite might be happily running through the nav system circuits, but the screen didn't show me a thing. I spun my chair to face the command console, but its screen had gone blank too. So had the screens for the engines, communications, and life support. I stared stupidly at all those empty screens until it dawned on me that things had gone awfully quiet behind my back: the usual noise of machinery, air ventilators, and cooling fans had fallen silent.
Then the lights went out. Shit.

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The above passage consists of a long paragraph describing the narrator's gradual realization that something has gone wrong with the ship. The sentences of that paragraph aren't all long, but taken together, they give the impression of slowness: a progressive unfolding of one bad thing after another, each making the situation seem worse.

The passages in this section are examples, not recipes. I’m not saying you should imitate them (although you can, if you do it wisely); I’m just using these passages to illustrate the effects that rhythm can have. It’s up to you to develop your own feel for rhythm and how it can work for you.

The second paragraph is the capper: two short sentences giving the final indication of trouble and the narrator's reaction. After this, the story will presumably shift away from describing the initial problem and will tell what the narrator does in response. (It should be obvious that after "Shit," the story can't go back to the narrator watching things go dead. The time has come for the narrator to get out of the chair and do something. One reason that's obvious is the story's rhythm—after the capper, you have to do something different.)
Using a capper like this is a nice gimmick, but it shouldn't be overdone. I'm showing it here as an easy-to-understand example of rhythm in sentences. Most of the time, rhythm is more subtle. You mix the length of sentences, and stay away from sentences that are noticeably short or long.
The rhythm in dialogue often contrasts with the rhythm in the surrounding text.

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"Frank? Frank. Oh no. Frank!"
She ran across the room to where he lay bleeding on the immaculate white carpet...

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The rhythm in the dialogue line shows extreme emotion. After the choppy dialogue sentences, the text that follows is smoother, conveying some of the speed with which the woman runs to the body.
Single words can be important to rhythm too. A long word has a different effect than a short one. Sometimes I find myself saying I need a two-syllable adjective with the emphasis on the second syllable, or else the rhythm of the sentence will be thrown off. Fortunately, the English language has so many words, I can usually find one that suits my purposes.

A writer's sense of rhythm develops over time. It's mostly unconscious—I certainly don't say to myself, "It's time for three long sentences followed by a short one." I'm simply aware of the "feel" of what I'm writing and try to match that feel to the impression I'm trying to make.

<Previous  |  Top  |  Table of Contents  |  Next> Copyright © 2001, James Alan Gardner

Source: http://www.thinkage.ca/~jim/prose/rhythm.htm