Yeah, yeah, I know. Writing is not music. And yet, it is.
Or at least the mood you’re keeping on the book is a rhythm.
For instance, action is fun and keeps the reader’s interest. But if all you do is a continuous run, with no breaks, you’re going to end up losing the reader’s interest. A certain type of fatigue sets in. The reader gets tired of never seeing anything else but the run run run of frenetic action.
In the same way while a lot of readers like erotic interludes in their romance, if all you have are erotic interludes it’s erotica, and there’s a reason erotica is usually shorter than other work.
In the same way, we all enjoy what I call the slow-dancing moments, when the character is enjoying a banquet, or talking to an old friend by the fireside, or —
If that’s all you have, you don’t have a novel. Oh, it might be a literary novel, one of those slice of life, but even then you have to have a lot more erotic interludes no one enjoys in the middle of the nice, relaxing moments. Otherwise the literary critics will get upset. (I just realized literature and French movies are very similar!)
I realized this as one of my readers, to whom I’m sending a chapter a night — except the last two days, due to raging ear infection (does everyone else get utterly scattered and unable to think when they have an ear infection. And yes, it’s getting better, thank you, I should be back up to strength tomorrow) — after a series of introspective, though hopefully interesting chapters said “So, we’re getting ready for other fight/run sequence, right?”
And yes, that’s part of the rhythm. The other thing to keep in mind though, is that each of the fight/run sequences has to be pushed higher, and each of the introspective sequences become more revelatory or bring more relevnt information to the fore. Until the end, when the climax happens in the action, and then we let it all down with the last of all chillax sequences.
And that’s it. There should be a rhythm to your novel, between fast and slow, creating the composition of emotion leading to catharsis.
Unlike the other rhythm method, this one is designed for creation.
Mad Genius Club 
14 responses to “Writing By The Rhythm Method”
Though I seriously track the plot focus of my 4-acts, I lay the internal rhythms more by ear (as it were). I use Scrivener to write, and I find it helpful to attach labels to scenes that quickly characterize them for me: POV character, and Status: Act or Talk or Act&Talk. That’s enough for me to keep some variety going for my muse, and it’s easy to monitor as an overview.
BTW… I define each of my “scenes” as a single POV character, but I was just rereading James Clavell’s Shogun, and he can have a dozen POV characters in any single scene, just sentences apart, back & forth as they dialogue. It’s an excellent way of conveying dozens of conflicting motivations, schemes, cultural misunderstandings, etc., but it would drive me nuts using that mechanism in my own writing… it’s not how I think about my sort of adventure stories. For the reader, it’s like using the “god” perspective (or at least “kami”). It still leaves “what will happen?” as a mystery for the reader, but reveals (most of) the conflicts.
Is Act/Talk/Act&Talk a third label separate from POV character and scene progress (To-Do, WIP, First Draft Done, etc)? I didn’t realize you could set more up than that, but admittedly I’m running an older Microsoft version of Scrivener.
I just defined my own metadata for Scrivener and use it consistently.
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Okay, cool. I think I like the progress status labels better for now, but maybe I’ll do something like that too sometime.
That does explain why I dislike most French movies, Jacques Tati excepted.
Though I expect one could never be a good comedian without a firm grasp of the rhythm of people.
You might give OSS117 Cairo: Nest of Spies a shot. The sequel in Buenos Aires is dreadful, but the first one has some funny moments, particularly a running gag about the protagonist (sort of Maxwell Smart, only obnoxious in a French way rather than an American way) being awakened by the muezzin.
This is something I am dealing with in the current WIP. There’s been ominous hints and weird maguffins, airship flight mechanics and mysterious crates and interesting people from the hero’s past that the heroine is less than thrilled to meet, not to mention the two leads having a fairly productive discussion about the fact that he’s longer lived than she is and significantly older. But the first onscreen monster attack showed up around what looks like the 40% mark. Most of the stuff before then looks fairly important to me, but we’ll see what my beta readers/editors say.
In other news . . . checking one of my books to see if there were any new reviews . . . Amazon has a new trick! Head=>Desk.
Customers say
Customers say the plot twists and turns are excellent. They also appreciate the great characters and plot. Readers describe the writing style as well written and honest.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Good LORD.
Incidentally, I instied you yesterday.
Ah!, that explains why the jump in the first in series. Thank You!
That’s been going on for months… :(
Ugh! I just noticed, and it was only two of the five I checked.
“Oh, it might be a literary novel, one of those slice of life, but even then you have to have a lot more erotic interludes no one enjoys in the middle of the nice, relaxing moments.”
I’m reminded of Miss Marple’s description of the novels that her nephew Raymond enjoys: “Unpleasant people doing unpleasant things and not even, apparently, enjoying them very much.”