Getting rhythm into your writing

How does your writing sound to your reader? Does it move along nicely with variety? Or is it flat and dull? In this article, I’ll tell you why you should be more Gloria Estefan when you write and how to do just that.

You’re in the car and your fingers start tapping on the steering wheel to that song on the radio.

Rhythm.

Gloria Estefan told us it was going to get us and she knew what she was talking about.

Rhythm is important when you write.

Why? It entertains your audience. It adds a bit of oomph. It mixes things up and has your readers paying just that bit more attention.

Here’s how to get rhythm into your writing.

Short sentences are good. They say “Oi!” Look at this now!”

Chances are you like variety in your job, your social life and your dinner choices. Your audience is no different. So, give them variety when you write.

With writing, your building blocks are words and your words can be rearranged in many different ways. You can choose short sentences. They’re great for emphasizing. They jump up and down a bit. They’re extrovert. And their favourite outfit would be something in neon sequins.

Incredible, inflating information dump

When we write there's the challenge of the gaping, black hole that’s just waiting for us to fall in. Most of us try and show that we know what we’re talking about, and so we fall into the Incredible, Inflated Information Dump.

Here’s how.

Runaway train

It’s tempting to get everything down that’s important, all the stuff, all the facts, all the by the ways you should know this, and yes, you should also know that, and before you know it your words are a runaway train and you’ve created a sentence that’s taken on a life of its own, grown into a paragraph as gangly as an awkward teenager, then launched a siege and taken the whole page hostage, smacking your reader in the face with a wall of words and making the job of keeping up and understanding much harder for your reader and all of this can lead to them...

⛔️ STOP READING

Because they’ve had enough.

And this is how our eagerness to help others and show that we know what we’re talking about leads us deep into the pit of Incredible, Inflated Information Dump.

In short, long sentences can be very confusing and exhausting.

And you don’t want to confuse or exhaust your reader.

So, mix it up.

Use long sentences to give more information and depth to explore and probe. Use short sentences for impact. Then add some sentences of medium length.

And to check that you’ve mixed it up with plenty of white space in between different topics (paragraphs) you can read it aloud.

This is how you get rhythm into your writing.

And that is how to be more Gloria Estefan.