RHYTHM in WRITING
An often overlooked and underutilized tool in the writer’s box is rhythm. We think of scansion and flow as necessary in lyrics and in poetry, but we fail to notice just how powerfully it plays in prose.
Speech writers use this in putting together the public pronouncements of politicians all the time. Dramatic shifts from soaring, evocative declarations of elevated ideals to short, bulleted plan points allow people whose work is largely bureaucratic and intellectual create an emotional response in vast audiences. In repetitious rallies. Across the nation. To cheers.
Our best television and film writers use the rhythm of speech and dialogue to build tension and to create dramatic undertones in largely expositional scenes. Aaron Sorkin’s fast, walk-and-talk banter gives way to eloquent, persuasive monologues. David Milch created a pattern of New York rhythms in the squad room of NYPD Blue dense enough that we could smell the mixture of over-steeped coffee and stale Kevlar vest-sweat. After that he created the pseudo Shakespearean dialogue style that gave Deadwood its signature sound.
In the short novel The Slow Regard of Silent Things, author Patrick Rothfuss slips the reader into poetic rhythms so elegantly that the carefully crafted rise and fall of directed inflection sneaks up, turning the prose itself into unexpected magical potency.
A study of poetry at least to the extent that one has a firm awareness of the rhythms of emphasis, the structure of a clearly defined rhyme scheme and the repetition of a codified pattern gives any writer an advantage over the competition.
Think about the rhythm of a business meeting, in which everyone wants to not only be heard but to be seen as participating and thinking fast. Compare that to the grinding rhythm of a conversation between a concerned parent and a sullen, monosyllabic teen.
Some rhythms are more obvious than others, but the more aware we become of the power and potential of rhythm in our writing, the more apt we are to use it and the more capable we are of creating work that catches the interest of readers who might resist reading entirely or, more importantly, whose job it is to read entirely too many manuscripts every week. POETIC FORMS
Formal poetry is poetry that follows specific rules of rhythm and/or rhyme. It is, quite simply, poetry that adheres to a form.
THE SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET (From the Italian “sonetto” which means “little song.”)
• Fourteen lines written in Iambic Pentameter • Ten syllables per line with the emphasis on the even-numbered syllables (buh-DAH buh-DAH buh-DAH buh-DAH buh-DAH) • Each set of two syllables is an iamb • Five iambs per line makes it “pentameter” (Literally a rhythm of five) • Follows a structure of three quatrains and a couplet (Quatrain is a set of four lines, couplet a set of two) • Rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
That you would choose each week to drive down here to draw what skill you might from what I teach fills me with joy, but also with some fear that in my arrogance I overreach. Some people surely find some benefit and in the past I know I’ve helped a few but having people pony up to sit for hours of instruction’s still quite new. I walk the world each day with attitude I’ve practiced to appear so confident that when I feel such waves of gratitude I fear some grand exposure’s imminent. My point is just to offer thanks to you for finding lasting worth in what I do.
There are other forms of sonnets, Petrarchian, Spenserian possibly others that I’m not remembering. (Venetian, maybe? Is that a thing?) Mostly they vary only in rhyme scheme. Petrarchian sonnets are generally an Octet (eight lines) and then a sestet with the rhyme schemes for each varying by need for the particular poem.
Spenser created a forward-threading rhyme scheme using the Shakespearean quatrains and couplet style, making it abab-bcbc-cdcd-ee, the first line of each new quatrain rhyming with the last line of the preceding one.
Write a sonnet or three. THE LIMERICK
These are often bawdy or insulting to an individual and I believe them to be directly derived from the ancient Druid satyre. They also eventually found their way into a great many books of children’s poetry, ranging into the nonsensical and the absurd.
• Five lines • Rhyme scheme is ALWAYS aa-bb-a • The emphasis must NATURALLY fall on the appropriate beats
LIMERICK emphasis runs like this:
Beh-DAH-beh-deh-DAH-beh-deh-DAH Beh-DAH-beh-deh-DAH-beh-deh-DAH Beh-DAH-beh-deh-DAH Beh-DAH-beh-deh-DAH Beh-DAH-beh-deh-DAH-beh-deh-DAH
He stands there and talks for an hour enjoying each moment of power but when he is done it’s he who’s had fun the taste we’re all left with is sour.
In some cases an extra unaccented syllable may appear at the end of each line, but if it appears in one of the three longer lines, it must appear in all of the longer lines and if it appears in one of the shorter lines it must appear in both.
Write a limerick or three. HAIKU
A Japanese poetic style that follows no rhyme scheme nor particular rhythm, haiku is designed to create an elegant efficiency of expression.
• Seventeen syllables • No rhyme scheme • No pre-determined scansion • Three lines of five syllables, seven syllables, and five syllables respectively
The smell of stale smoke meets me as I walk inside familiar as Mom.
Generally the goal with haiku is to put images in place in the first two lines that really only come into focus with the revelation of the third line.
Write a haiku or three.