Writing by Ear

How Tuning into the Sound of Language Can Elevate Your Story

Tom Bentley

There’s a passage in Huckleberry Finn where Huck is describing how he and Jim travel down the river at night, hiding at dawn on the overgrown banks:

The entire passage is a marvel of cadence and rhythm, a singing vernacular that rolls through your mind. The reason I excerpted this particular paragraph is because it mentions sound—or its absence—directly and also uses an unfamiliar term—“a-cluttering”—that could, but doesn’t, disrupt the reader. Rather, the word choice supplies the river’s background music in the reader’s ears.

Magic this might seem, but much more is at work. The author is acting as orchestra conductor: Conscious waves of the writing wand bring the word woodwinds in when needed, at the right volume. And note the piccolos of punctuation: a dreaded semicolon (think of Vonnegut’s declaration that semicolons are “transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing”), a brace of dashes, the wink of the comma before the “maybe” at paragraph’s end. Those are the tiny adjustments in sentence pace and breath that resonate, quietly, in the reader’s mind.

You’re the writer: Those words, those adjustments, are yours to make. And you can make them best by reading your work aloud.

HEAR THE MUSIC OF WORDS

Henry James famously said that summer afternoon are the two most beautiful words in the English language. That’s arguable, of course, but Henry could feel—could hear—that a certain succession of letters, syllables, and sounds are felt and heard in the reader’s mind as being pleasing or painful. (James himself perpetrated paragraphs of such intricately curling phrase and clause that you couldn’t locate the originating verb with a microscope, but on this summer afternoon in question, he’s clear.)

The best way to find the summer afternoons or dodge the blistering thunderclaps in your writing is to read it aloud. Hear whether it flows or fumbles. Become conscious that a well-placed comma can invite a sentence to catch its breath or that the exclusion of that comma can spark an agreeable acceleration. Even complex sentences with potentially cumbersome clutches of words can be structured so that they are a series of smooth steps or, if need be, a graduated set of invigorating leaps. The artful mixing of Anglo-Saxon bread with Latinate butter, short words and long, ones with internal rhyme that gather tightly with their cousins, a two-word sentence next to a twelve worder—here you have a well-tuned orchestra of words, not dissonant squawking.

Oddly, reading writing aloud will often reveal holes in composition that are unseen (well, unheard) when the words are only read in the head. Speak it, and you’ll know its truths and its terrors.

STRETCH OR SHRINK YOUR SENTENCES

Rivers can gush and splash, sometimes trickle and swerve, according to the contours of the land and the volume of their flow. So it is with sentences. Narrative stretches can comfortably flop out and languish, and, in context, sound just right. Dialogue can be spat out, surge in herky-jerky jumps, and still pin a reader to the page. But you won’t know if your tale has just the right amount of molasses or could use more caffeine unless you hear the words and hear them spoken.

When you’re editing your work on the screen or, better, on the printed page, you can get into a comfy, slumping numbness caused by the familiar beats and patterns of your own expressions. Reading the work aloud pulls you back, straightens the spine of your attention, so you know if your characters fall flat or light fires. The ears hear what the mind mumbles.

It’s very important to note here that I’m not talking about producing writing that’s contained and leashed, no hair out of place. Some writing needs to gallop, to careen; other writing needs to simmer or smolder. By reading it aloud, you know if the tension you’re trying to build in a scene doesn’t actually flop. Hearing a fresh metaphor can give you a frisson that’s a bodily rush, but the wording on a flat metaphor will leave your ears—and your mind—unmoved.

NOTE THE SHAPE OF SOUND

I’m a slow reader anyway, but when I see a sentence, or even a word, that touches me both visually and aurally, I’ll say it aloud a few times, mouthing its syllabic shape. (Hey, there are no horses around to spook, so I’m safe.)

Consider that words have both aural shapes and textures that are felt and heard in the reader’s mind, often at a visceral, emotional level. Writing that sounds ugly is less persuasive (unless you’re playing with foul-faced words for effect, which is a different matter entirely). So pay attention to the sounds and the shapes of your words. Make them swim, spin, or sigh in the auditorium of the imagination rather than crash or clatter. Your audience will rise to their feet to applaud rather than to run.

In Huck, Twain managed to create a character whose expression is uncannily pure, using a dialect that doesn’t rely on clumsy spellings or folksy twang but on a kind of raw immediacy. Of course, Twain took more than seven years to finish his Adventures—I suspect he kept reading it aloud to get Huck’s voice just right.

You might not want to take seven years to get your words just right, but no matter if you use Hemingway’s tight-lidded box of words as a model or Austen’s more elliptical resonance, pay attention to how they sound. Make music in your reader’s ears, and you’ll make more readers.