“Once a book gets well begun, my ear takes over. It makes me know, for instance, that this is the wrong word and it has at least one syllable too many and I must, if necessary, spend and hour or two trying to think of, or find in my dictionary and thesaurus, the right word.”
Around Our House
THE DIFFERENCE between good writing and mediocre writing is frequently a matter of rhythm and euphony. Often, indeed, rhythm is what makes a writer’s style, and always it is what gives him pace. There are many kinds of rhythm in writing. One of the most important is simply the melody of words and their proper balance in a sentence.
Words can give you sound effects that heighten the meaning of your sentences simply by the way they sound. The English alphabet is very versatile. Take the letter s for instance. Its sound can be used to denote evil, hatred, disgust, loathing, in such words as snake, sin, serpent, disease or hiss. Or we can use it to denote tenderness and gentleness in words like sweet, soft, shadow, lissome, still, sorrow and sadness.
F is a quiet, muted sound that barely breathes. “Full falls the fading light upon the glen” is an example of horrible alliteration but is a good illustration of the muted, quiet effect of the f sound. Hard c and g have a brittle, crackling sound, as does k. Listen to crack, cataract, cough, cut, gravel, gust and gullet. T, d and p, are explosive sounds and may be effectively used to express disgust, anger or bitterness, as in “Bitter is the brown of death, black and dark and dull.”
Anyone knows how to put words together to make sense, but the writer must learn to use words to add to his meaning by their very sounds. If he wants a quiet mood, he must make a stream murmur or sing, not bubble or chuckle; the breeze must sigh or sough, not blow; the sky must be pale or luminous, not bright and clear. If he wants to describe a thunderstorm, he must rattle around a bunch of r’s and some d’s, as in “The ragged edge of clouds rimmed round the hills, and thunder threatened rattlingly.” I use these exaggerated alliterations to show you the effect. If he wants to build a mood of tenderness and love, he will throw in lots of l’s and v’s and soft sh’s, with long, open vowels — “Lashes curled lovingly over soft, deep eyes.”
That is the melody of writing. But beyond melody must lie a deeper rhythm. Rhythm is the very pulse of writing, its balance. The simplest rhythm is in the cadence of sentences. They must sing and flow, or chop and crackle, or meander gently, or sizzle with heat and anger. A good writer can handle all of them equally well, and knows almost instinctively when to change his pace. A good writer alsc writes sentences that will scan almost as easily as poetry, not of course rhyming, but with a stress and balance that handle well.
In addition to capturing the attention of the reader, the first page of a book is usually where an author must set his pace and style, form his rhythms. I began The Plum Thicket with this sentence: “Last summer I went back to Stanwick.” It stood alone, paragraphed, by itself. I could have said, “I returned to Stanwick last summer,” which would have been much less emphatic. Generally the simplest, the shortest words, put together with simple stress, are the best for emphasis. The sentence was meant to stand out, stark and emphatic. It was also meant to imply forthrightness, which is actually a false implication, for the novel is a psychological suspense story, and nothing about it is forthright. It reads like an innocent summer idyll, but there is always an undercurrent of dark tones. But the first sentence, or at least the first paragraph, of a novel must grab the interest of the reader or only the most patient or loyal reader will wade through the remainder of the novel. There is a hint of the hardness in The Plum Thicket in the use of the word “back” and the “Stanwick” in the first sentence.
I began The Kentuckians, which is a historical novel, with the sentence: “I have a wish that those who come after me should know the truth about our troubles with the Transylvania Company, and the truth about those first hard years in the settling of this country.” Immediately the reader knows, from the length and the wording of this sentence, that it is going to be a folksy kind of story, told by a man who had a part in the trouble and struggle. The reader knows, furthermore, that he is an earnest, brave and candid man. He wants the truth to be known. The memoir style, rhythm and pace is set, and the reader follows easily along as the man remembers and tells his story in his own way.
The books of the ridge trilogy, The Enduring Hills, Miss Willie and Tara’s Healing, are written in a ballad style, with singing, strongly cadenced descriptive passages, with characters and incidents that would fit into such folk songs as “Fair Ellender” or “Lord Randall” or “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair.” There is melodrama, grief, violence, birth and death, and to balance them there is joy and happiness and gentleness and goodness. They are as sentimental as the old folk songs themselves, and fitting because the old folk songs are still sung in the region of their setting.
That is rhythm in style. There is also rhythm in the structure of a book. All the chapters must lead toward the final climax, but that must be a long flowing rhythm, like the shoreward swells of deep water. There are, however, waves within that long, swelling rhythm, which crest and then recede. They are sometimes divisible into chapters; sometimes they are longer and more intense, building up over several chapters. They are the ebb and flow of the scenes and the dramatic action that make up the plot, but they must never be so strong as to dwarf the final, surging climax. They lead toward it, sometimes almost touch it, and then slowly subside to start building again.
There is still another kind of rhythm that may be used to strengthen a book. Ernest Gann had the copilot in The High and the Mighty whistle a small tune almost abstractedly. The repetition of that tuneless whistling gave a tied-in, tight rhythm, not only to the character, but to the whole structure of his book. E. M. Forster does the same with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in Howard’s End, the very plot of the book paralleling the alternating movements of the symphony, from peace to panic and emptiness. Proust does it with a scrap of the sonata, Vineuil’s “little phrase,” which recurs several times in his long Remembrance of Things Past.
It does not have to be done with a musical phrase, however. It may be very successfully done with a habit of a central character. My Hannah Fowler had heavy black hair that was forever falling forward and that she brushed back constantly. She brushed that hair back on the first page of the book, and the gesture is repeated often enough that it becomes a fixed, connected rhythm between the character and the reader. A bird song, heard at certain seasons, recurring, gives a rhythmic feeling. Miss Willie is a rhythmic cycle. It begins with the song of a thrush, which is not repeated until the end, when the book finishes with the song of a thrush. My book The Kinta Years begins with my first memory, a little girl named Corinne Moore. The book ends when my family moves away from Kinta, Oklahoma, and I tell Corinne goodbye, my heart broken at leaving her.
Willa Cather uses light in the same way in The Song of the Lark. The book is suffused by light, sunlight, moonlight, starlight, and the light, bright joy of song. She does the same thing with houses in The Professor’s House. There are at least a dozen houses in the book. In my first book, The Enduring Hills, I made use of the appearance of the hills to give a framework for the plot, a blocked, rhythmical structure. Forster uses a wisp of hay in one of his books. The word “hay” occurs time and again. Virginia Woolf uses the passing hours, as tolled by Big Ben, in Mrs. Dalloway. Any such thing, repeated with discretion, becomes rhythmic. It must not be overdone or it becomes monotonous, but if skillfully handled it is like the leitmotif in a symphony, or counterpoint in harmony. It provides a rhythmic undertone.
The names of characters have a special rhythm of their own, either because of their euphony or because of their fitness to the characters. I think I have never done better than to choose “Hod Pierce” for the young ridge boy in The Enduring Hills. The name “Hod,” with its association with hard work, indicated his long, withering toil, as well as the simplicity of the boy’s character. And I liked the use of “Pierce” as I thought of the boy thrusting, piercing his way out of his environment.
“Miss Willie” is almost perfect for a spinster schoolteacher, as well as the simplicity of the name. There is an element of masculinity in all old maids. “Willie” is also a rather endearing diminutive of William and Miss Willie had a kind of pixieish quality, which made her very lovable. The name fits her like a shoe.
“Hannah Fowler” is another good name. I wanted the name of a woman who was strong and enduring. The old-fashioned name of Hannah suggests that quality. She had to be strong, physically strong, because she had not only to endure the hard work of life on the Kentucky frontier of those early days, but she had to live through her Indian captivity.
I went dreadfully astray in the choice of “Tara” in Tara’s Healing. If the title originally chosen, however, which was Scarlet Ribbons, because Tara’s love for Hod Pierce’s ailing mother made him bring red bows of ribbon to brighten her hair and give her moments of joy, had been used, it would have been perfect. Tara was originally an artist. He was also Irish. I was asked, on the assumption that the public does not like to read about artists, to change him to a doctor. I should have changed the name with the vocation, but I did not sense the flaw until the book was in print. Tara’s Healing is also a good example of a bad title. It had nothing to do with healing, except in the sense that love is a healing thing. He did learn to love and serve people.
“David Cooper” is, I think, a good, sound name for the frontiersman in The Kentuckians, solid, simple, plain: and his wife’s name, “Bethia,” is good, but I made her rather a weak person without intending to and spoiled the Cooper family for much further use in the historical series.
“Katie” was a good choice for the little girl in The Plum Thicket, and “Aunt Maggie” was all right. There were lots of Kates, Lizzies, Maggies, Lucys and Emilys around the turn of the century, which is the time of the book, and in the South, which is its setting.
Girls’ names, as a rule, should be more musical than boys’, and the most musical have at least four syllables or five. With a one-syllable last name, the first name should have several, such as my daughter’s name, Elizabeth Moore. Then there are Catherine Wells, Margaret Mann, Jane Montgomery, Sue Maloney and so on. I have a niece whose name is Joan Holt, which is atrocious from the musical standpoint. The assonance of the two o sounds is bad, and with her one-syllable last name, her first name should have had at least three syllables. Joann would not have been bad.
My own name, Janice Giles, two j sounds together, is too short, and this is one reason why I use my maiden name with it. Janice Holt Giles is a little better but still not good. Janice is simply not a musical name, with its short a and n. I should have used my middle name, which is Meredith. Meredith Holt when I was a girl, or Meredith Giles since I married, would have been great.
Book titles, aside from telling something about the book, should, if they are to have sales value, be euphonious and rhythmic also. As a rule, I like a short, descriptive title. I like one the customer can easily remember. And I like it to mention the name of at least one character because people like to read about people. The Enduring Hills is an excellent title, though for the sake of euphony “The” should have been left off. It has a psychological value — it is like a magnet drawing people to something safe and secure and enduring. Miss Willie was fine; the combination of “Miss” and “Willie” was intriguing. Tara’s Healing couldn’t have been worse. 40 Acres and No Mule was, on the surface, too long, but it was taken from a familiar saying of Civil War days when the freed negroes were promised 40 acres and a mule. I thought its familiarity would save it.
The Kentuckians is a good title, exactly right for a novel about early Kentucky. The Plum Thicket is good, thicket indicating a maze or tangle, which, psychologically, was what the book was about. Harbin’s Ridge, which was my husband’s book, was originally titled Faleecy-John, after the central character, and I still think it is much the better title. The softness and rhythm would have, I believe, interested people. But the book did well anyhow. Good titles certainly help make good sales and it is well to give considerable thought to them. But publishers have a way of either suggesting or arbitrarily changing titles on you, as they did in Harbin’s Ridge and Tara’s Healing.
Another example of a changed title was my book The Land Beyond the Mountains, originally called The Glory Road. But Bruce Catton had just a few years earlier brought out a book titled Glory Road, and I changed my title to The Land Beyond the Mountains in order to avoid confusion. The book did well, because once again it was about the Kentucky mountains, which always appeal to readers.
A good way to watch the rhythms in a book is to read the sentences aloud. This will frequently tell you if they are badly balanced or do not handle well. And a thesaurus is invaluable in helping you to choose words. Personally, I never consciously weigh and balance, but I had a good musical background and before I ever began to write fiction I had written a good bit of poetry, so I think cadence and rhythm are probably inherent in my make-up. My musical ear tells when I am off.
Many writers seem to have a natural ear for rhythm, but since English is naturally a stressed language it seems to me anyone can learn, with discipline, to write lucid, well-balanced sentences and paragraphs. And, happily, I think most writers do have something of a talent for it or they wouldn’t be writing at all. Take a little talent, add discipline and hard work, and you can come up with a much better quality of writing.