Speeches are memorable for more than what they say; they’re memorable for the way that they sound. That’s why parallelism is important: it’s a tool that allows you to feel how your speech sounds as well as write it down. When a speaker hits on a rhythm that sounds inevitable, you’ve likely felt that before. […]

Rhythm comes from using consonance in your writing. While it is not as obvious as alliteration or rhyme, reading out loud will help you see how important consonance is for making sentences sound connected. Maybe you have a draft where everything appears right on paper, yet reads awkward. It’s likely not because of actual words. […]

These are phrases or words repeated at the start of each sentence, line, clause, or other part. This can be a rhythm that sticks in ear as you hear it in protest chants, in political addresses, in church sermons. But writing this stuff well is not as easy as it appears. The rhythm can become […]

Remember the experience of reading some poems and knowing they are right inside your head, but on the page they look flat? There’s a quiet little hum of repetition, a kind of music you can hear in your ear tying the words together, but they seems stubbornly ordinary on the page. So much of what […]