Chapter 1: What does Frank Herbert say about controlling reader's rhythm?
There's a 1969 interview with Frank Herbert, the author of the Dune series, where at one point he talks about something called phraseology, essentially the study of sentence structure. And he relates it to something he saw as being crucial in crafting quality prose for his works. And that's controlling the reader's rhythm.
how do you control the reader's rhythm well he does that by varying the length of sentences varying sentence structure like putting the action at the front in one sentence and then at the end at the other and then he'll even make sure that the words within a sentence are of varying lengths so have a couple two syllable words couple one syllable words and maybe a three or
four syllable word here and there, switch it up. The goal is to keep his writing from being rhythmically monotonous. And people who do a lot of public speaking know that being deliberate in your pacing and varying your pacing is super important for maintaining the crowd's engagement. And this is true whether you're talking to a crowd of a thousand people or just one friend at a coffee shop.
And Frank Herbert recognized this, but he took it further. He wanted to control the rhythm of his readers to harness the power of deliberate varying pace for the medium of print. Well, I say the medium of print, but interestingly enough, he didn't seem to see too much of a difference between the mediums of print and that of oral communication.
Here's a quote from Frank Herbert from that 1969 interview. I work orally because I think that language was spoken long before it was spoken. written. And I think that unconsciously, we still accept it as an oral transmission. So he's saying that he believes that even when reading a print book, that information is still ultimately being handled as if it was orally transmitted.
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Chapter 2: How does sentence structure affect quality prose?
As a blind guy, I can't really speak with much authority on the experience and mechanics of reading print. But the idea that all print communication is, in the end, oral communication feels right, doesn't it? Because humans have been communicating orally way before they've been communicating via writing. Oral communication is much, much more instinctive for us.
We just haven't had the time to evolve, to internalize writing as a premium method of communication for us, right? Anyways, I thought it was really cool that a mid-20th century author like Frank Herbert, way before the popularization of audiobooks, recognized the importance of pace and the value of his writing sounding good when spoken out loud.
That said, pace is only one aspect of what can contribute to quality writing. Today, Red Sail are going to attempt to define quality prose. This is Audiobook Cafe. I'm Jacob Szymanski. Red Sail is the host of My Life in Books on AMI-audio. He comes on the show once every two weeks. Red, welcome back.
Thank you very much for having me back, Jacob. That's a fantastic quote from Frank Herbert. And yes, very much so. The oral tradition of storytelling, I don't think, can be overlooked. The Iliad and the Odyssey were sung and spoken before they were ever written down. I think we need to remember that. And actually, as you say, celebrate it in the growth of audiobooks.
We're merely returning to the source.
There's something full circle about it, to go back to crowding around a storyteller and just listening enraptured to this person who has fantastic public speaking skills. It's a real skill also to just communicate it well, and that's when audiobook narrators come in, right?
Yeah, very much so. And we've said it before, a good audiobook narrator can make a mediocre book sound fantastic. A bad audiobook narrator can kill even the best book.
Facts. And one of the reasons I feel like this idea that all written communication ultimately is oral communication in the end, it feels right, is that when you're reading print, you have a little voice in your head, right? There's a process that turns those words into spoken language. It has a rhythm to it, like one word at a time. You're not just taking in blocks of information at a time.
I would assume not. And then that turns into oral communication in your head. There's a process of translation there. And that's why it just feels right to me. Do you know what I mean?
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Chapter 3: What does it mean for prose to feel immersive?
reading the word on the page but you know we both read braille you know i don't know about you but i'm as somebody who used to be able to see my fingers skate across those braille drop dots and they're actually forming the shapes of the letters and the words in my mind's eye which then is some what i'm reading to myself and i'm doing it with an internal voice
It would be fascinating to have someone on the show one day who's an expert in reading mechanics, like a reading therapist or something like that. I'd be fascinated to know. But I do want to touch on this idea of pacing in text and varying your sentence structure. And I want to give you a couple of quotes from Frank Herbert. And to be clear, he's not the first author to vary sentence length.
That is kind of common writing advice. But I want to show you an example. Here's a quote. No more terrible disaster can befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a hero. The first sentence here, no more terrible disaster can befall your people, has two words with three syllables, terrible disaster.
And then the second half of that sentence, then for them to fall into the hands of a hero, no longer than two syllables. And it kind of makes you focus on the first one. And then the switch up to shorter words speeds the pace a little bit, doesn't it? Because three syllable words take longer to process.
Yeah, there's a musicality about it. And then also the repetition of the word fall three times. So you're already tumbling with the sentence. You know that, you know, that word fall is ringing like a knell in the background. And I really genuinely believe in the musicality of language. The differential between prose and poetry is quite arbitrary, I think, in some ways.
You know, not all poetry has to be iambic pentameter and rhyme every second line. In fact, sometimes that's the worst poetry. There's a poetry naturally in language and in the cadences we use. And as Frank Herbert says, if you are... placing your punctuation and your paragraph breaks and the different lengths of words in places deliberately to extend people's interest, to immerse them more.
then you're creating a type of poetry, whether it's called prose or not.
Because, correct me if I'm wrong, the definition of prose is essentially writing that is explicitly not poetic. That's the very short version, right?
Yes, but I would argue that all language is poetic to an extent, unless it's produced by an AI. But maybe even that, who knows? In which case, it doesn't really apply. I think the main thing here is that for language to be effective, it needs to sound as if it has come out of the mouth of someone, rather than being a caricature of or something machine-generated.
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Chapter 4: How can pacing influence the reader's experience?
Now, we might have a different voice for a thriller, which is probably going to be a little bit more staccato. It's probably going to have... fewer lengthy descriptions of the beauty of the night sky, although those two can be put in there for effect to slow the pace before starting it up again. But you create the voice of the book, and the best prose... is invisible.
You forget that you're reading prose. You are so immersed in the story. And the prose has actually done the job of immersing you. It has made you believe in the story without necessarily feeling that you're having to do battle with the words.
That's the feeling of reading good prose is that it almost disappears, right? I get the same feeling when a narrator is doing a really good job. You forget that it's a person in a booth. The words just exist on their own and you can live in the moment being fully absorbed by the story and taking off your critic hat and just sitting in a moment.
Exactly. And I think there really needs to be a consistency of voice to the prose throughout the book. I've noticed narrators struggle in the past when that consistency isn't there because they've got into their rhythm and then they're wrong footed by something that just actually sounds like it should be from another book.
And I know there was a trope a few years ago where you would have multiple narrators reading books with multiple points of view in them. I read a book that had 11 different narrators for 11 different chapters because each was giving a different point of view.
Now, that works, but it was clearly taken as a view that it's going to be easier for each narrator just to adopt a voice rather than read the book in a different voice for each narrator. And my wife, funnily enough, read the same book and I went, how did you find that book? And she said, bitty, difficult to get into. Because it didn't have a unified voice.
But you're talking about the consistency of the prose and its quality in that an author will always develop their own personal voice and idiosyncrasies and, you know...
patterns that you can pick up on and sometimes those patterns are very enjoyable sometimes they're not and the author often has to choose a tone do you want to write more formally are you going to utilize more modern language are you going to be more colloquial you know you have to make these decisions but you have to stick to it otherwise you're reading something that feels like it's jumping all over
in space and time, you're not really sure what it's supposed to be. That's why I know exactly what you mean by that consistency.
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Chapter 5: What common writing advice can enhance prose quality?
If it sounds acceptable in that Stephen Hawking voice, then you know you've nailed it. If you can understand, you know, if you come away going, oh, I understood that, then you know you've nailed it.
If your screen reader has good pace when reading, then you know you're reading something good. Another piece of advice that I've seen, and this is a really common one, is just to avoid filler intensifier words like very and really, quite, basically, quite, just, literally, that sort of thing. You don't need to say... I'm very tired. You can just say, I'm tired. It means the same thing.
Very, in that case, is just a filler word. And if you say, I'm tired, it's more to the point. It just reads better too. You don't want to hear those words that often. Exactly. Yeah, no, very much so. More cholesterol. Yeah, cut the cholesterol.
Now, if you put all of this together, if somebody listens to all this advice and an author has a great voice of their own, and you could say that they have phenomenal prose, the ultimate goal of that is to have the readers feel something. When writing is done well, it feels a certain way. What does good writing feel like to you?
Totally and utterly immersive. It's where I actually forget that I'm reading or being narrated to and I am part of that story. I can almost visualize myself on set with the rest of the characters in the book. And I think there's something that we haven't actually talked about that authors need to do to augment that. And it's to put in things that we as readers can recognise, can grasp hold of.
Whether that's sensations, feelings, smells... or specific details. So if I'm reading a book about London, you know, it helps if somebody says, Big Ben was chiming in the background and he could see over the river to Southwark Cathedral.
And it's something that immediately, oh, right, okay, I've got my reference points in this book, either physical or visual, what a concrete, but they help immerse me. They help me feel that I am part of this story. Bad writing will always jolt you out of that emotion and you'll just go, oh, that feels uncomfortable.
And then you start thinking about the author rather than the characters of the story.
And something that goes a long way in writing that way. is to engage in hyper specificity don't say oh it smells like it smells like amazing food at this street corner no it smells like the fish and chip shop it smells like the well-used oil of the fish and chip shop now we're talking now i'm feeling like i'm in london I have to add one more feeling that I get when I'm reading really good prose.
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