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.

Before and After with Guest Cynthia Ruchti

I’m addicted to Before-and-After pictures. Hair makeover. Home makeover. Make up makeover. Yard makeover. I love to say “Wow,” to compare the “needs work” version of something to the “Isn’t that amazing?” version, to watch the transformation from dull and lifeless or outdated and awkward to stunning.

That may be part of the reason why serving ACFW as president and hosting the annual conference moves me so deeply. The conference itself is an album of Before-and-After pictures.
A favorite worship song contains this bridge (in two meanings of that word):

I come in empty; I leave filled.

Bring my sickness; I leave healed.

Brokenhearted; You mend every piece.

I come in captive; I leave free.

Many ACFW conference attendees arrive empty, exhausted from a year’s worth of striving, of staring at computer screens and draining their energies to balance life and writing, dreams and reality, passion and possibilities. The After picture shows conferees leaving filled to overflowing with ideas, hope, enough instruction to have earned them a degree, and enough new friendships to max out their Facebook limits.

Some, though thrumming with anticipation, arrive feverish, overdosed on unmet expectations and works-in-progress in desperate need of suturing. In the After picture, they have a better understanding of what to expect in the publishing world, and their projects have gained a healthy glow rather than the febrile flush.

Brokenhearted? Yes. Some arrive brokenhearted. Their Before pictures reveal bloated rejection folders and disappointment scars that show no matter how much concealer they use. And although the ACFW conference cannot remove the rejections and may in fact add more, the After picture shows evidence of mending because the attendee let the Lord at the scarring.
Captive to any number of false hopes and misguided dreams, conferees come to the conference and experience a retooling of their thought process and the birth of new dreams guided by the Holy Spirit’s work on their hearts and through their instructors and fellow writers. They leave free—bound only to God’s will for their writing, not the expectations of others.
Are these Before-and-After images true for every person who attends an ACFW conference? No. Some come in captive and leave captive. Some were gloriously free when they walked through the doors on Day One.

But every post-conference picture shows change. A broader smile. A deeper look of determination. Greater confidence. Clearer direction.

Sure, on closer inspection, each image shows evidence of exhaustion, too. The intensity of conference is both exhilarating and exhausting…and all the more so for the conference team, board members, and volunteers who pour themselves into the needs of the attendees.
But one look at the Before-and-After pictures reminds us it’s worth every ounce of energy expended.

In early September of 2008, I wondered if I might be heading for my last ACFW conference. Was the pursuit of a fiction contract my idea after all? I thought it was God’s. But I’d worked a long time and written a lot of words that remained unpublished. I arrived at the conference empty, willing to lay down my desire to write fiction if the Lord had something different in mind for me.

I left filled.

Within two weeks, I had an agent and a contract (for They Almost Always Come Home, Abingdon Press) and within two months, I’d been elected president of ACFW.
At the following conference in 2009 I was blessed with another contract (for the newly released A Door County Christmas, Barbour Publishing). Other projects now wait on editors’ desks.
Willing to lay it all down, I came to conference brokenhearted and found the Lord truly does “mend every piece.” Another transformation from Before to After…with no doubt more work to be done on me every day of this writing makeover.






Today Cynthia is giving away one copy of each of her releases to two Seekerville posters. Winners announced in the Weekend Edition.

They Almost Always Come Home (Abingdon Press)
The Heart's Harbor in A Door County Christmas (Barbour Publishing)


Bio

In addition to her role as ACFW president, Cynthia Ruchti writes and produces the radio broadcast, The Heartbeat of the Home, and serves as the editor of the ministry’s magazine, Backyard Friends. Her women’s fiction debut novel—They Almost Always Come Home—received 4.5 stars from Romantic Times. Her September release—The Heart’s Harbor in A Door County Christmas novella collection—is a romantic comedy. She and her plot-tweaking husband live in the heart of Wisconsin. Visit Cynthia at : www.cynthiaruchti.com