THE MUSIC OF WRITING
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A woman writes a book about the fixer-upper she purchased as a vacation home and the quaint hill town in which it's located. In the opening paragraph of her first chapter, she tells of an old carpenter and his cat, just one of the local sights that catches her eye as she strolls into town for her morning cappuccino. She writes in detail how the cat perches on the carpenter's shoulder as he works.

Too slow? Uninteresting? This book is currently on the Nonfiction Bestseller list at Amazon.com. The scene just described is taken from Frances Mayes's Bella Tuscany, (Broadway Books, 1999), the sequel to her best-selling memoir Under the Tuscan Sun (Chronicle Books, 1996).

How can a paragraph about an old carpenter and his sidekick cat hold a reader's attention? The answer has to do with music. Frances Mayes writes about Tuscany like Andrea Bochelli sings Italian arias. She can write about paint drying and make it sound interesting. Don't believe me? Read her chapter "Whir of the Sun" in Under the Tuscan Sun, when her handyman discovers a fresco hidden under layers of old paint. Mayes's books move along as leisurely as a mid-day meal on a terrace overlooking the Apennines. Yet rather than inspiring thoughts of siesta, her descriptions paint scenes so vivid you can almost taste the bruschetta and hear Luciano Pavarotti in the background of your mind singing "Nessun dorma."

Words, even on paper, are never silent. They make sounds in your reader's mind. Your mystery novel might read like Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 as it builds to a mighty climax. Your romance might read as lyrical as a James Taylor melody. Like good music, good writing pleases the reader's ear. In his book, Make Your Words Work, (Writer's Digest Books, 1990), Gary Provost provides several tips on how to make pleasing music from your writing.

Tip number one:  Vary sentence length. Write a combination of short, medium, and long sentences. For example, in Mayes's paragraph referred to above, her first sentence is a whopping forty-one words in length. However, her second and third sentences are only eleven words long, followed by sentences of fourteen, four, nine, twenty-one, twenty-four, seven and ten words respectively. Short sentences speed up the tempo; long sentences slow it down. Just as the tempo of a piece of music varies, so should the tempo of your writing.

Tip number two:  Vary the structure of your sentences. Grade school grammarians taught that complete sentences consist of a subject, a predicate, and an object. In that order. We're used to this construction; it's a logical way to communicate and will work fine for most of your sentences. But your writing will start to sound monotonous in your reader's ear if all of your sentences follow this construction.

Tip number three:  Use parallel structure to add emphasis. Parallel structure involves "setting up two or more sentences or phrases in a row so that they will make a similar sound." Mayes employs this technique with the word "fortunate" in the first chapter of Bella Tuscany:

"Fortunate that cypress shadows fall in wide bands across the sunlit road; fortunate that on the first day back in Cortona I see a carpenter carrying boards, his tabby cat balanced on his shoulders, tail straight up, riding like a surfer. The carpenter tosses the wood on sawhorses and begins to whistle. The cat bends and leans as he moves-a working cat. I watch for a few moments then walk on into town for a cappuccino. Thank you, I think. Fortunate that yellow blazes of forsythia light the hills. After seven summers on this terraced land, Ed and I feel a rush of happiness on turning the front-door key. I'm enchanted by the rounded Apennines, this quirky house that takes in the sun, and the daily rhythms of life in a Tuscan hilltown. He's far in love with the land. By now he knows the habits of every olive tree.

Fortunate. Otherwise, we might want to post a For Sale sign on the gate ten minutes after arrival because neither well pump is working: a grinding noise in the switch for the old well, a buzz for the new well. We peer into the cistern-at least there's enough water for a few days."

Mayes wants the reader to understand why she and her husband feel fortunate even when faced with two broken well pumps. The repetition of the word "fortunate" builds the case for why she feels so in light of her water woes. If she'd only mentioned feeling fortunate for the blooming forsythia, we might wonder about her sincerity. By providing a list of things for which she feels fortunate, we better understand her emotions in spite of her adversity.

Tip number four:  Use sentence fragments. Sometimes. Fragments, like varying the length and structure of your sentences, and using parallel structure to add emphasis, create rhythm in your writing. Not every sentence must have a subject and a predicate. Most of them, yes. But not all.

Tip number five:  Don't repeat uncommon words. Provost says that writing should sound like conversation, filled with common, ordinary words. Don't write as if you've referred to your Thesaurus for each verb or adjective. In Under The Tuscan Sun, Mayes writes of her love for the Italian curse, "porca miseria," pig misery. Yet if she used it every time something went awry in her restoration plans, it would lose its offbeat appeal. Like the crash of cymbals, use uncommon words for emphasis or effect, not to carry your tune.

And finally:  Read your writing aloud. As with music, if you really want to hear your writing, you have to play it. By reading your writing aloud, you test the quality of its sound. Reading your writing aloud also helps you identify sentences that might look right on paper but don't sound right once you hear them. You'll pay more attention to sentence length if you continuously run out of breath from reading too many long sentences in a row. If each sentence starts with, "Jane did this," you'll know you need to vary your sentence construction. Reading your writing aloud helps you to hear the rhythm, the music of your writing. It might move fast or slow, but if it pleases your ear, chances are good it'll please your reader's ear, too.

About the Author:  Joy Thompson is a full time writer and novelist. Her articles and monthly columns have appeared in numerous print and online publications including Fiction Fix, NovelAdvice, Write Advice, The Same Page, WriteBusiness, IdeaMarketers Writer's Ezine, WordWeb Newsletter, Word Weaving, and many others.

When she's not writing, Joy spends much of her spare time either teaching or taking online writing courses; reading an ever-growing collection of writing books; and studying the market. She is a member of Romance Writers of America, several online writing communities including Fiction Writer's Connection (http://www.fictionwriters.com), and a book group in her local community.