Hi! May I ask if you would be able to give some advice on how to manage rhythm when it comes to writing? I really enjoy reading your fics and would love to learn how to incorporate rhythm into my own writing (albeit academic) so it's more enjoyable
Firstly, sorry it took me such a long time to answer this ask. Secondly, I’m so flattered that you’d like my advice on this topic - though, to be clear, I am very much an amateur writer and am no authority on the craft! But I do think a lot about the rhythm of my stories and I can happily share my own thought process here, in the hope that it might be useful to you too. And for what it’s worth, writing so much fiction and trying to improve as a creative writer is the best thing I’ve ever done to improve my academic writing as well. So the ideas are absolutely transferable!
For me, the most important thing is to read everything aloud. It gives you a different perspective on the sound of the sentences and I can always tell when there’s a clause that needs to be cut or when a word is missing. Pay attention to when your mouth wants to end the sentence (and when it’s hanging there, because it needs more). I’d also recommend reading your work aloud several times: if you keep tripping over the same phrase or section, then that’s a good sign that the flow’s not right.
Following that, read other work aloud! Great books and poetry almost always have perfect rhythm (that’s why they’re so pleasing to read and listen to!). Often reading your own work aloud only alerts you that something’s wrong; it doesn’t tell you what to do about it. That comes from reading work with excellent rhythm and slowly learning what that sounds like to the ear. Overall, I do think reading aloud is the most important thing: in John Gardner’s book The Art of Fiction, he writes at length about the specific details and techniques of writing with various metres, but then says that a good writer will do this all by ear. Only in dire circumstances do you need to mark the stresses on a sentence!
Vary your sentence structure. Gary Provost said this better than I ever could:
“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety.
Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.
So write with a combination of short, medium, and long sentences. Create a sound that pleases the reader’s ear. Don’t just write words. Write music.”
This is an important thing for me to keep in mind, because I love a long sentence!
Sometimes you need an extra word or clause just to make the rhythm work. Mostly, I try to cut out the ‘just’s and the ‘now’s, because they’re filler words and are lazy on my part. But sometimes you need that extra beat or two to make the rest of the sentence sound right.
Match the rhythm with the mood and character. This might be less relevant for academic writing, but in fiction, the rhythm you choose for a scene (or paragraph) is an integral part of the overall mood. If a character’s feeling relaxed, lazy; daydreaming by a river in summer, you might use long, drowsy sentences to capture the atmosphere. If a character’s struggling to think straight or is under immense stress, you might use sentence fragments. Short, regular sentences might work well for a character who is very logical and orderly, while longer, meandering prose might make sense for someone dreamier whose mind is often floating off on tangents. You get the idea.
And lastly: get the rhythm of the final sentence right. That last sentence is the part of your work that readers are left with, and it’s so important that it leaves them feeling like the story is finished. If you get the rhythm wrong, you’ll leave your reader with a sense that there’s more to say but they’re not privy to it. Don’t do it! Make that last part perfect.
So those are the rhythm-related things that I keep in mind while I’m writing. I hope that they’re useful to you (and sorry again for taking months to write them down!). :)

















