How to Make Writing That Sounds Like Music
What Makes Great Writing? #008 - Featuring Under the Banner of Heaven
My wife will watch any show with Andrew Garfield.
That’s why we’re currently plowing through a series about murdered Mormons. Or maybe murderous Mormons. It’s unclear at this point - we’re only on episode three.
The dialogue in the show is fine, I guess. No speech has grabbed my writer brain. That’s probably because the whole time the show is playing, I’m just reciting the title in my head.
Under the Banner of Heaven
Under the Banner of Heaven
Under the Banner of Heaven
What caught my attention first was an element of rhetoric that was not present: the alliteration Why not “Beneath the Banner of Heaven?”
The letter B is charged and explosive. (Say “bee” and watch how your lips thrust outward). That would match the intense, violent nature of the show. It seemed like an easy choice.
Beneath the Banner of Heaven
Beneath the Banner of Heaven
Beneath the Banner of Heaven
The series takes its source material from Jon Krakauer, who is an excellent author. Why wouldn’t he gave gone for the double B?
The title was still drumming in my head last Thursday when I got a text from my friend Minnow. Minnow wanted writing advice.
On my first read, I have no idea why a piece of work is good or bad; I only know that it is good or bad. My inner English teacher hated this. “BAD!”
Then, the analysis rushed in.
The grammar went under the gun first. Minnow’s three items in a series feels awkward because of mismatched possessive pronoun. What he’d really written was this:
“Your business. Your life. Your the messiness in between.”
The sentence (and therefore the brain) short circuits. A better version would be:
“Your business, your life, and the messiness in between.”
This pick helped, but didn’t solve the problem. Before I knew it, I was running Minnow’s words around on a broken record, just like I’d done with the show title:
“Your business, your life, and the messiness in between.”
“Your business, your life, and the messiness in between.”
“Your business, your life, and the messiness in between.”
I stacked up these lines against the metronome in my head. The click in my ear has been playing since Papaw Brison sent me to Cumberland Gospel School Singing Camp.
2…3…4…
“Your bus-ness, your life, and the mess-i-ness in be-tween.”
“Your bus-ness, your life, and the mess-i-ness in be-tween.”
“Your bus-ness, your life, and the mess-i-ness in be-tween.”
There’s a scene in Love Actually where fictional rocker Billy Mack is talking about his cheesy Christmas song. He recommends to a DJ in the movie that the audience should “enjoy the incredible crassness of the moment when we try to squeeze an extra syllable into the fourth line.”
That’s exactly what was happening here - too many syllables. The word “messiness” wrecked the whole rhythm. Trimming that word back to its root fixed the issue.
“Your business, your life, and the mess in between.”
Now, Minnow’s ascending tricolon, felt much cleaner, with the stressed syllables hitting on the downbeat all the way through. The tagline sang.
Minnow was impressed. Or annoyed. I haven’t decided yet.
Humans know rhythm before we know language. (It is called a heart BEAT, after all). Since words bounce by themselves, it stands to reason that great authors might trade rhetoric for music.
Primed with a new way of thinking, I ran back to my show title, playing my imaginary metronome.
Say these out loud. Stress the bold syllables.
“Under the Banner of Heaven”
“Beneath the Banner of Heaven”
Do you see how the meter changes? Do you feel it?
Rolling out rhetorical figures with no regard for meter is like letting a first-year med student perform bypass surgery. Good intentions lead to lifelessness.
Sometimes, it’s worth taking a step back, staring at your sentence, and asking “does this feel right?”
Writing needs to feel right.
Much love as always <3
-Todd B
P.S. If you’re looking for a neat line starting with the word “beneath,” check out this Robert Burns poem
P.P.S. For a closer look at the nonsense inside my brain, say the line “Under the Banner of Heaven” in time with the introduction of “We Are Young” by Fun.