The rhythm and blues of writing that sings

We’re often told that good writing means varying the length of our sentences, though we’re rarely told why – or the specific roles long and short sentences play in good writing.

Good writing has rhythm, and you cannot achieve rhythm without variations in sentence length, anymore than you can create musical rhythm without varying the duration of a composition’s notes and chords. That’s why beautifully written prose is often called “musical.”

Let’s take an example from the Bob Baker book Newsthinking. Baker diagrammed an article from famed Los Angeles Times’ sports columnist Bill Plaschke. Baker says Plaschke’s writing technique involves radically varying the length of his sentences. Here is the first half of a column Plaschke wrote about a Crenshaw High School basketball player with the word count of each sentence shown in bold numerals. Baker asks that we listen to the effect that’s achieved.

20 – From the moment he stepped into that foreboding land between Slauson and Vernon, David Meriwether just knew people would point.

7 – He just knew there would be stomping.

7 – He just knew there would be chants.

22 – Monday afternoon, amid the dusty haze of history that hangs thick in the legendary Crenshaw High gym, David Meriwether was proven right.

2 – And wrong.

24 – When he was introduced as a junior guard for the Crenshaw High basketball team before the first official practice, more than 1,000 students pointed.

7 – While cheering and whooping and high-fiving.

19 – When he ran to the court to join the state’s most celebrated high school basketball program, there was stomping.

6 – As everyone danced on the bleachers.

18 – And yes, by the time he walked into the blue-and-gold embrace of teammates, there were chants:

4 – Milk! Milk! Milk! Milk!

26 – Leave it to a bunch of silly teenagers to compose the perfect nickname for this rich, refreshing break from our city’s tired sirens of conflict.

16 – Meet David Meriwether, the first white male basketball player in the 30-year history of Crenshaw High.

8 – The students have, and they overwhelmingly accept him.

7 – His teammates have, and they like him.

13 – The coach has, and he thinks Meriwether has a chance to be good.

29 – “This is cool,” Meriwether said Monday, bouncing off the shoulders of buddies, posing for giggling girls, looking at home in a place as foreign to most whites as Mars.

2 – Yeah. Cool.

26 – To understand the importance of the enrollment of a single student in a high school of about 2,760, it should be understood who doesn’t enroll here.

2 – Whites don’t.

13 – You can literally count the number of them at Crenshaw High on one hand.

4 – David Meriwether makes four.

21 – During his first two weeks of school, he was consistently bumped in the halls by gang members and questioned by classmates.

When Baker asked Plaschke what he was trying to accomplish, his answer was: “Like many journalists, while I report with my eyes, I write with my ears. One way I attempt to keep a good rhythm is to vary the length of my sentences. Sometimes, as crazy as it sounds, it’s as if I try to turn my 25-inch story into a drumbeat. Looooong sentence. Short. Short. Looooong sentence. Short. Short. It’s never that structured, of course. But that’s sometimes how it works out. I think in these weird terms because I always read my stories aloud to myself as I’m doing the final edit before I send them in. I want them to ‘sound’ interesting.”

You may have wisely made a mental note that Plaschke wrote these words and wild sentence variances in a column – and a sports column, at that – which gives the journalist more latitude than appropriate for a news story. True enough. But Baker offers an example of how this technique can be suitably and effectively used in a news context.

Baker says consider the following paragraph from the middle of a story about a Marine shot to death at a bus stop while home on leave. (The words-per-sentence cadence, for those keeping score, is 7/4/4/22/6/3/7.)

There, Giovanni exchanged stares with another teenager. Glowering led to words. Words led to punches. Giovanni had the upper hand, witnesses told police, when his opponent backed away and reached for a zippered binder he was carrying. His hand emerged with a gun. He fired once. Giovanni crumpled to the sidewalk, mortally wounded.

So think sentence length. Think rhythm. Listen to some R&B and pay attention to the cadence. Then make your writing sing.

 

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