Rhythm

An Element of Fiction

Not that it’s a closely guarded secret or anything, but rhythm is not often highlighted as an element of fiction. Yet, it might be one of the most significant and powerful elements there are. And some very prominent writers agree.

However, let’s open with John Gardner’s observation that many writers might be oblivious to this element; he says, “Many writers, including some famous ones, write with no consciousness of the poetic effects available through prose rhythm. They put wine on the table, put the cigarette in the ashtray, paint the lovers, start the clock ticking, all with no thought of whether the sentences should be fast or slow, light-hearted or solemn with wedged-in juxtaposed stresses.

“No one can fail to notice the poetic beauty of Joyce’s closing lines in ‘The Dead,’ but the poetry comes from the rhythm of the sentences (rhythm so subtle only prose can achieve it).”

Gardner then adds, “By keeping out a careful ear for rhythm, the writer can control the emotion of his sentences with considerable subtlety.”

Ursula K. Le Guin wisely observes, “The chief duty of a narrative sentence is to lead to the next sentence — to keep the story going… But the pace and movement depend above all on rhythm.”

She elaborates, “Its rhythm is part of the rhythm of the whole piece; all its qualities are part of the quality and tone of the whole piece. As a narrative sentence, it isn’t serving the story well if its rhythm is so unexpected, or its beauty so striking, or its similes or metaphors so dazzling, that it stops the reader, even to say Ooh, Ah! Poetry can do that. Poetry can be visibly, immediately dazzling. In poetry, a line, a few words, can make the reader’s breath catch and her eyes fill with tears. But for the most part, prose sets its proper beauty and power deeper, hiding it in the work as a whole. In a story it’s the scene — the setting / characters / action / interaction / dialogue / feelings — that makes us hold our breath, and cry… and turn the page to find out what happens next. And so, until the scene ends, each sentence should lead to the next sentence.

“Prose consisting entirely of short, syntactically simple sentences is monotonous, choppy, a blunt instrument.”

Observing Virginia Woolf’s prose, Le Guin then adds, “The rhythm of Woolf’s prose is to my ear the subtlest and strongest in English fiction. She said this about it in a letter to a writer-friend: ‘Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can’t dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it…’ I’ve never read anything that says more about the mystery at the very center of what a writer does.

“Prose can’t rhyme and chime and repeat and beat as poetry can, or if it does it had better be subtler about it than the first half of this sentence.”

E.M. Forster also appreciates rhythm, “There are times when it means nothing and is forgotten, and this seems to be the function of rhythm in fiction; not to be there all the time like a pattern, but by its lovely waxing and waning to fill us with surprise and freshness and hope.”

He then goes on to say, “I doubt that it [rhythm] can be achieved by the writers who plan their books beforehand, it has to depend on a local impulse when the right interval is reached. But the effect can be exquisite, it can be obtained without mutilating the characters, and it lessens our need of an external form.

“In music fiction is likely to find its nearest parallel.”

Our never-silent Jacques Barzun weighs in with, “Judgment about when to vary and when to repeat must naturally extend to the rhythm set up by the succession of words… In the honorific sense, rhythm is altogether personal and, as such, it is a fundamental constituent of great prose.

“In the nature of things, no advice can be given about constructing good prose rhythms. The mind’s ear is the only guide… But if you will ‘listen’ to what you read… you will readily see how the sounds of words, their lengths and accents, make for motion, the prime virtue of prose.”

Let’s give John Steinbeck the final word. “The joy comes in the words going down and the rhythms crowding in the chest and pulsing to get out.”

Let me end by saying that I have observed, on more than one occasion, that rhythm will tell you what word to use next.

© Wolfstuff

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