StillStunned
A swollen WIP folder
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2023
- Posts
- 7,755
Just now I wrote a sentence:
Anyway, even as I was typing the sentence, I was rewriting it in my mind. I've mentioned a few times that I studied Middle English poetry, and I'm very fond of alliterative verse and the muscular rhythm that it brings to language.
I always try to make my writing as rhythmic as possible, because I think that it helps the reader. The beats of the sentence correspond to the words you want to highlight, so the reader automatically picks out the important bit.
But even without that, alliteration is a powerful tool in writing. You can use reinforce the meaning by making the reader notice the words more, and alliteration is an easy way to do that.
So about half a second after I wrote the sentence, I changed it to this:
Even so, I'm not going to change it a second time. Precisely because of the lack of rhythm, it stands out. The eye stumbles over the sentence, as it were, which is another trick to make the reader pay attention. And whenever the reader pays attention, the story sticks in their mind. At the start of a new paragraph is a good point to demand their focus.
Of course there's a balance. You don't want the reader to be stumbling through the whole text. You want their eye to move forward with as little effort as possible, so the words flow from their screen into their imagination. Effort takes them out of the story, and if it happens too many times you'll lose them.
This is how I write. I consider every word of every sentence, to make my story as effortless to read as possible. This doesn't mean using infantile language, although I won't go out of my way to use fancy words if a simple word will do. It means I don't want my reader to have to focus on understanding the text, if they can instead be focusing on the story.
The more effort I put in, the less I demand from my readers. And seeing as there's little I enjoy doing more, I think that's an excellent deal.
"She" is Flower, a member of a gang in a dark sword & sorcery setting. Not that it really matters for this thread, it's just a bit of background.Remembering that she still needed to find some loot, she moved forward carefully, trying to be as quiet as possible.
Anyway, even as I was typing the sentence, I was rewriting it in my mind. I've mentioned a few times that I studied Middle English poetry, and I'm very fond of alliterative verse and the muscular rhythm that it brings to language.
I always try to make my writing as rhythmic as possible, because I think that it helps the reader. The beats of the sentence correspond to the words you want to highlight, so the reader automatically picks out the important bit.
But even without that, alliteration is a powerful tool in writing. You can use reinforce the meaning by making the reader notice the words more, and alliteration is an easy way to do that.
So about half a second after I wrote the sentence, I changed it to this:
The second half of the sentence is much stronger now. The first half ("Remembering that") feels out of rhythm. It would be much smoother if I wrote:Remembering that she still needed to find some loot, she moved forward, careful to be as quiet as she could.
Outside alliterative poetry, this is about as smooth as the English language gets, in my humble-but-I-have-an-MA-in-this-crap-and-25-years'-experience-rewriting-other-people's-English opinion.She needed to find some loot, so she moved forward, careful to be as quiet as she could.
Even so, I'm not going to change it a second time. Precisely because of the lack of rhythm, it stands out. The eye stumbles over the sentence, as it were, which is another trick to make the reader pay attention. And whenever the reader pays attention, the story sticks in their mind. At the start of a new paragraph is a good point to demand their focus.
Of course there's a balance. You don't want the reader to be stumbling through the whole text. You want their eye to move forward with as little effort as possible, so the words flow from their screen into their imagination. Effort takes them out of the story, and if it happens too many times you'll lose them.
This is how I write. I consider every word of every sentence, to make my story as effortless to read as possible. This doesn't mean using infantile language, although I won't go out of my way to use fancy words if a simple word will do. It means I don't want my reader to have to focus on understanding the text, if they can instead be focusing on the story.
The more effort I put in, the less I demand from my readers. And seeing as there's little I enjoy doing more, I think that's an excellent deal.