Writing, Rhythm and Music

I’m not a young person. I’m not the most educated in the world, either. But I do have a strong compassion for the arts. My mother taught me piano and I could read music just like I could read my ABCs. I grew up reading Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe. I treasured classics like the Count of Monte Cristo and The Last of The Mohicans. I spent summers acting in plays.

I painted in oils when I was young and I had sculpture lessons when I was not yet a teen. My first award in art was for a bust I did of a friend when I was only twelve.

I’ve worked with film makers creating short films for book trailers and concept films that screened all over the world.

What I’m saying is, I’ve been a part of every type of art there is and when I step back and look at it as a whole I see how interchangeable they are.

The most beloved written works are musical. The most treasured musical pieces are dramatic.

William Shakespeare used the rhythm of words to pull his viewers in and touch them emotionally. That is what makes his work so legendary. Writers would do well to follow his lead. Why? Because that is what draws us to the words we read. Those are the stories that we remember because we feel them.

It is why actors who have Shakespearean training are so good at what they do.

Why was Peter Jackson’s film Lord of the Rings so successful? Because he had a writer who knew rhythm. And he chose Shakespearean actors who knew how to deliver those lines the way they were written.

Can you hear the rhythm in every line? In every step? It’s music.

If I could give writers a little tip that would improve their stories, it would be to learn how to put rhythm in the words that you write.

“O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,

How can we know the dancer from the dance?”

W. B. Yeats, “Among School Children” from The Poems of W. B. Yeats: