Writing Acoustically

with guest Cynthia Ruchti

I wake every morning with a song on my heart. I don’t hear the notes in my ears. They resonate in my mind and soul. Tune, lyrics, inflections, crescendos, notes held an extra beat at the peak of emotion… The mind can perform unfathomable feats—like playing music when there is no sound.

Readers “hear” vocal inflections from a book’s characters. They hear slammed doors and sizzling bacon, tires crunching on gravel, the beep and wheeze of life support machines.

Heated dialogue crescendos to a two-handed tympani boom or emotional cymbal crash. Lyrical sentences form a pastoral accompaniment to the narrative, when done well. A romantic scene? Violins, of course!

         credit NBC/courtesy of Neal Peters Collection

[Can’t help thinking of Rosanne Rosannadanna’s SNL comedic uproar over all the “sax and violins” on television these days.]

What does it mean to know that readers’ minds and souls can hear what we write, that an internal sound and rhythm pattern plays within as they read our novels? Readers, what does it mean for you?
         

We deepen the experience for readers if we learn to write acoustically.

•    Writing for the ear.
•    Writing words, sentences, and scenes that reverberate.
•    Writing small things that can be heard from far distances because of the acoustic structure we’ve created.
•    Writing word choices that enhance the musicality of our story, with an ear for pace and rhythm.
•    Writing so readers wake in the morning with our story’s song on their hearts.

How do we write for the ear?

In high school English Composition class, we learned about words with impact from the sound they infer: sizzle, stomp, flap, grate, ooze, prickle, boom, snap…  Onomatopoeia—words that imitate natural sounds.

And sibilance:

Sibilance is a manner of articulation of fricative and affricate consonants, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the sharp edge of the teeth, which are held close together. (Wikipedia)

Huh?

Oh! Hissing or shushing sounds, as in sip, shop, zip, ship, snake, zoo, shun…

We studied concepts like alliteration:

The cold clamp clung to the captain’s career. (Wouldn’t you like to read that story?)Damp and dark, the dank interior of the dungeon deepened his depression and despair. 

image courtesy Salvatore Vuono FreeDigitalPhotos

A whole novel’s worth of sentences like that could deepen MY despair. But used frugally, alliteration can pound a rhythm as skillfully as Stomp—the entertainment group or the word. Sound plays an important role in:

•    creating tension (Her ribs rattled against each other under his lecherous gaze. Could he hear?)
•    setting the stage (The shushing of the willow branches overhead soothed her like the lullabies she’d forgotten.)                     
•    establishing characterization (Her father crashed into the room, dislodging bits of plaster that hailed down on her with a tick, tick-tick-tick.)

Sound plays an important role in:

•    creating tension (Her ribs rattled against each other under his lecherous gaze. Could he hear?)
•    setting the stage (The shushing of the willow branches overhead soothed her like the lullabies she’d forgotten.)                     
•    establishing characterization (Her father crashed into the room, dislodging bits of plaster that hailed down on her with a tick, tick-tick-tick.)

How do we write in a way that reverberates within the mind and heart as a guitar string continues to vibrate long after it’s touched? 

Some books and genres lend themselves easily to this concept. Literary fiction or emotion-packed women’s fiction find it a natural fit. Memorable phrases. Quotables.

But every novel has the opportunity to strike a chime that echoes in a reader’s soul. It may be laughter that rings on. Or increased compassion. Or a new way of looking at faith, relationships, fear, the future.

Those passages, scenes, or phrases, even a single word—“FRRREE-DOM!”—can create a melodic resonance, a song that loops through the mind whether awake or asleep.
How do we make small voice-passages sing far and long?

Mel Gibson did it with his one word—“FREEDOM!” It’s a scene that told the whole movie’s story in seven letters. My sisters and I sang for a family funeral years ago. As we took the platform and stood behind the podium in the massive church, we noticed the absence of a microphone. The acoustics in the sanctuary were carefully engineered to make artificial amplification unnecessary.  

How do authors accomplish that in stories? By architectural design. By attention to even the smallest detail of a scene. Are there unnecessary detail-drapes that soak up sound rather than amplify it? Are the airwaves clogged with secondary character voices that don’t matter to the story? Is the story so noisy that the important voice—or Voice—has a hard time being heard?

Making a scene or story musical and memorable doesn’t necessarily mean adding lyrical sounding words. Sometimes it means stripping everything that gets in the way.

Novice writers may hear critiques about the language or dialogue or even the length of paragraphs not being appropriate for their genre or the tone of the book.

•    A split-second car/semi impact that takes four paragraphs to describe
•    The deathbed scene that’s over in a sentence.
•    A love/hate relationship resolved with a single kiss
•    A prairie fire told in long, poetic phrases as if the flames were sauntering toward the soddy
•    The chase scene bogged by pages of internal dialogue

Writers who read their work aloud often discover places where the musicality of their story fell apart. They stumble over awkward, pace-inhibiting words. They run out of breath before the end of the cumbersome sentence. They struggle to sustain dramatic momentum in the scene. Too many words. Or not the right words. Or patched together without the artistry that makes music of sentences.

How do we write so our readers will wake in the morning with our story’s song on their hearts?

Like any other musician, we practice. We work at our craft until we can move past the mechanics, but not skip over the mechanics. We practice until we know instinctively when we’ve hit a wrong note. We open ourselves to the process of FEELING the music, not just playing the correct pattern of notes and rests, rhythms, dynamics.

And we focus on telling the stories worth remembering in the morning.

Readers, writers, what author or book best demonstrates what you consider “musical” writing? You may have an answer from each of several genres. Let’s talk about them.

Author and speaker Cynthia Ruchti tells stories of Hope-that-glows-in-the-dark. Her novels, novellas, and non-fiction (how’s that for alliteration?) have won or been finalists in the Selah Awards, Christian Retailing’s Best, RT Reviewers’ Choice Awards, Family Fiction Readers’ Choice, the Carol Awards, the Golden Scrolls, and more. She and her husband live in the heart of Wisconsin, near their three children and five grandchildren. Cynthia currently serves as American Christian Fiction Writers’ professional relations liaison.  www.cynthiaruchti.com, www.facebook.com/CynthiaRuchtiReaderPage, www.twitter.com/cynthiaruchti, www.goodreads.com/cynthiaruchti

Her latest release is All My Belongings,from Abingdon Press Fiction, of which PW said, “Exquisitely detailed, balancing a beautifully written, engaging (love
story) with a message of peace and
grace in the face of adversity.”

Comment today for an opportunity to win a copy of All My Belongings. Winner Announced in the Weekend Edition.