Elements of rhythm that have a significant effect on how your writing feels include:
A lot of you logical people out there may now be thinking, "Who cares how my writing feels?! I’m trying to communicate here, not fall in love." But if you’re so logical, you have to admit that effective communication depends a lot on how alert and interested readers are. And you may have to take my word for it for now, but the way your writing feels has a major impact on how well your readers ingest your precious ideas. You’ll see it soon enough.
You can’t deny that music has a big impact on people. Music is made of two things: pitch and rhythm. Pitch could be compared to tone in writing, while rhythm is…rhythm.
Would you like to get the whole picture? Click here to find out why English is the (sort of mixed up) way it is.
Here’s what it comes down to: shorter, harder sounds and rhythms usually create tension (I don’t mean the negative kind. I don’t mean stress and conflict.) while longer, softer sounds and rhythms tend to create a more relaxed tone.
Word Sounds
Hard plosive sounds like K, T, P, and CH create the clearest rhythms. Next come voiced plosives (just add sound from your throat while making the same sounds) like G, D, B, and J. Next come other sounds like fricatives (S, SH, F, H) and voiced fricatives (Z, ZH, V), and finally soft glides (L, R), nasals (M, N, NG) and vowels.
The more short, hard words you use, the more tension you create. This gives a feeling of energy and action to your writing. Use it especially when you want something to feel more urgent and exciting.
Longer words not only feel calmer, they also sound more formal and educated. Use them when you want to create an aura of sophistication or relaxation. Remember, however, that too many might relax your reader right to sleep.
Variety is always a key. Most thriller movies don’t keep your heart racing for the full ninety minutes. They let you relax, thinking everyone’s safe, only to make you jump out of your seat when the monster or killer reappears. Contrast makes things stand out.
Sentence Variety
Do you like action movies? How long is each clip during the tense parts of the show? Even one second is pretty long. This continual change does two things: it keeps you on the edge of your seat as your mind is forced to continually absorb and quickly interpret new images, and it builds a fast, almost staccato, rhythm.
Just as with your word choice, the length of your sentences affects the tone of your paper. Short, quick sentences add tension and style. They wake up your reader a little. Longer sentences seem more formal and relaxed, but variety is again a key. Your writing is usually much easier to follow when you use sentence variety. Some short, some long. Read this paragraph out loud and notice how the sentence variety feels. Even the commas make a difference.
Paragraph Length
Two clues in the English language that show the importance of an idea are
If you have an important idea, skimming over it quickly sends the message that it’s not that important. Readers can also fail to notice it because they’re dragged off to some other idea so quickly.
Readers tend to remember the first and last things in paragraphs more than the rest that gets buried in the middle somewhere. If you have an important idea, anything you want noticed, start a new paragraph with it. The contrast helps it to stand out.
Paragraphs also act like a bag of ideas. Readers usually wait till the bag is empty before completely synthesizing the ideas contained therein. If your paragraphs are too long, much of the information may get lost and forgotten. Shorter paragraphs help readers to make sense of it all more easily, which takes less energy and keeps them awake longer. A double-spaced page should usually contain at least two paragraphs.
If you’re feeling a little confused at this point, trying to make sense of these new rules and remembering what your junior high English teacher told you—that paragraph breaks belong around ideas, then relax. Every big idea is made up of little ideas. You can break a paragraph between any of these. Just try to show a little consistency and you’ll be fine.
Rhythm goes even beyond the relatively small units of words, sentences, and paragraphs. For a discussion the "macro" end of rhythm, read about pace.
Repetition
You’ve likely heard the rule in English that says you can’t use repetition. But you can. You’ve heard that you can’t use the same word twice in the same sentence or even in the same paragraph. But you can. They say it sounds funny if you repeat a word, that it shows an inability to think of a simile, and that you can’t get away with it. But you can--if you know how to do it right.
Repetition is an example of breaking the rules for effect. Don’t repeat yourself for no reason. Use repetition carefully to emphasize points that you want to stand out. Like the "but you can" in the above paragraph. Do it enough that it’s clear that you’re doing it. If it looks like an accident, most readers will assume it to be so.
I once counted the number of words in the sentences of Henry Cardinal Newman that I had to read for a Victorian lit class. A hundred fifty was about average. What surprised me was that it wasn’t too hard to follow, I didn’t get lost in the middle of all his verbiage. My professor pointed out that parallel constructs were the reason.
Every time a reader encounters a new sentence, he has to translate the grammar to make sense of the words. This takes a little time and effort. But if you repeat such a grammatical construct, it’s much easier the second or subsequent time. Read the next paragraph for an example.
I never wanted to become an artist. I never wanted to grow rich and famous, to spend hours alone in open fields of flowers, to have my work scrutinized and discussed by professionals and amateurs and ignoramouses, to stare over the lights of the city and let my own feelings course through me, knowing I was hard at work. I never wanted this to happen to me, but it did.
It happened despite all my best efforts. Despite an overpowering desire to paint what I wanted to paint. Despite a refusal to succumb to the pressures of money and convention. Despite hours spent staring over the lights of the city while my brushes lay dormant and dry.
It was not my fault that I became an artist. It was never my fault. The blame belongs to passion alone.
Of course you don’t need to use nearly so much parallelism to use it effectively.