A Writer's Coach: An Editor's Guide to Words That Work by Jack R. Hart

Author:Jack R. Hart [Hart, Jack R.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2006-08-21T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

RHYTHM

Writers are in the music business.

—Don Murray

The Music in the Words

Fiesta celebrants gather around a mariachi band in a Jalisco village square. Angelinos cluster around a jazz combo on Santa Monica’s Third Street Mall. Oktoberfest revelers follow an oompah band pounding away in a Munich park. The magnetism of rhythm can draw an audience anywhere.

But rhythm’s primal appeal reaches far beyond its most obvious manifestations in music. A pleasing fabric design has its own kind of rhythm. So does the chirp of a cricket, the beat of waves breaking on a beach, and patterns of human language, written as well as spoken. Words can be appealing for the beat they produce, regardless of content.

How often do we find ourselves reading something with no possible application to our own lives? A die-hard urbanite reads an article on sagebrush, or a rancher gets caught up in an essay on New York rent control. If the words flow lyrically, they attract and hold our attention.

Language that lasts almost always resounds with deeply appealing rhythms. In The Elements of Style, William Strunk and E. B. White illustrate the power of rhythmic writing by referring to The Crisis, Tom Paine’s classic Revolutionary War essay. The Crisis sold more copies per capita than any other commercial publication ever printed in the United States. It is best remembered for its most lyrical line: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

That’s a masterpiece of syncopation. The t sounds cycle through the words in perfect counterpoint to the s sounds. The syllables collect in beautifully balanced groups. The sentence rolls off the tongue with the appeal of waves breaking on a beach.

But, as Strunk and White point out, Paine could have easily botched the job. Who would have remembered “How trying it is to live in these times”? Or “Times like these try men’s souls”? Or, worst of all, “Soulwise, these are trying times”?

Prove the point yourself by juggling a few other memorable lines. Would we remember “The early bird gets the worm” if Poor Richard had written “The worm is gotten by the early bird”? Would a simple injunction to “be selfless and patriotic” have inspired Americans in the same way as John Kennedy’s appeal that you “ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country”?

Despite its obvious value, some editors ignore rhythm as they strive to enhance accuracy, precision, and brevity. If you’re a writer who chooses the word “kid” because it makes just the right sound in just the right place, and your editor changes it to “youngster,” it’s time to talk. Editors need to know if you have particular rhythms in mind so that they don’t disrupt them with changes aimed at improving other aspects of your writing. A responsible editor will honor a writer’s intended rhythms if he can.

Whatever you do, don’t let tin-eared editing persuade you to give up your quest for pleasing cadences. Seductively rhythmic writing can add value that often transcends content.

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