If you specialize in literary fiction or poetry, you might not need to listen to my advice. But if you write commercial, genre fiction, here’s a reminder of something you know but may have neglected.
How your writing sounds is often as important as what it means.
Poetry, unlike song lyrics, has the music built into the words. Why not make your prose sound that way, too?
The simple solution is to read to read your writing aloud occasionally so you truly hear it. Now, if you’re trying to produce more than one novel a year (plus bog posts, reviews, articles, etc., etc.), you probably have a big daily word-count quota and might not have time to read your entire day’s output aloud. Or if you’re writing in a coffee shop, it might not be cool if people overhear you talking about exactly how a character was gruesomely murdered.
But you can compromise, and sort of mouth the words silently. Or, once you’re developed a sensitivity to how your words sound it will become part of your composition process. Then you’ll need to read aloud only a few tricky passages or any dialogue that sounds wooden. (Writing dialogue well is a subject worthy of its own essay.)
You don’t want to be reading your book to an audience for the first time, or listening to your audio book, and think, “That looked good on the page, but it sounds awkward!” (It has happened to me more often than I’d like to admit in my advertising copywriter day job.)
Here are some tips:
Alliteration is pleasing to the ears, but only use it deliberately—don’t let it sneak in by accident.
Also, watch out for accidental rhymes. They distract the reader and focus attention upon the rhyme instead of what you’re trying to say.
Try to avoid a bunch of sentences in proximity that are the same length or structure. This can have a hypnotic effect and put your reader to sleep.
Onomatopoeia—using words that sound like what they describe—is a great device to make your prose more powerful and make your action scenes come to life. “The branch snapped off” is stronger than “the branch broke off.”
So, open your ears and you’ll be able to make the reader intoxicated by your words.