We've been listening to Lambchop all weekend and it's not just Kurt Wagner's haunting voice, his haunting voice, which I can't get out of my head, it's his supple phrasing. It doesn't just give texture to his music, it gives it drama, as well.
There's a lesson to be learned from such a maestro. To explore the importance of phrasing in your own work, here's an exercise you might want to experiment with.
Try writing a paragraph with sentences of a similar length. I am using ten words in every one I write. I am not going to allow myself to use nine. God forbid that I should over run and use eleven. After a while my prose will become very dull indeed. It won't just be dull, it will be predictable too.
What if you shorten them, though? Truncate them? Alternatively you could allow them to drift from clause to clause, meandering like flowing water, until everything you want to say has been expressed. The effect is palpable. Immediately (and in a sense regardless of what you're talking about) they become easier to read.
When I'm working, I listen to the words inside my head before I write them down. I listen to the music of them: the rhythm and the stresses; I listen to hear where the pauses fall. So remember that if you want to discover the musicality of your own voice, thinking about the phrasing may be the place to start.
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