Have you got rhythm?

One of the most difficult things to teach to newbie copywriters, or anyone who wants to improve their writing, is the importance of rhythm.

All writing and speech has a rhythm. It’s not necessarily a regular rhythm in the bop-bop-a-doo-bop-ba-dang-dang-boom sense. Regular rhythms are usually confined to poems, songs and raps. But even in prose - the regular, everyday writing of newspapers, shopping lists, marketing communications and blogs - rhythm matters. And if you’re a smart copywriter you’re sensitive to it.

Before we discuss how rhythm affects your copywriting, let’s take a quick look at the mechanics. All rhythm in spoken and written language is created by patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables. I’ve underlined the stressed syllables in this famous quotation from Psalm 23 (King James Version, 1611):

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

Read it out loud. Roll the syllables around your mouth. Notice how the rhythms at the start of the sentence seem to build to a climax - ‘fear no evil. Memorable, isn’t it?

It’s also naturally rhythmic and catchy. When the estimable Mr. Coolio was looking for a way to begin Gangsta’s Paradise, he barely had to change the line at all:

As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I take a look at my life and realize there’s nothin’ left
Cause I’ve been blastin’ and laughin’ so long
Even my mother says that my mind has gone.

Now, the translators of the KJV thought like copywriters - they wanted their readers (and listeners) to ‘buy’ the ideas in the text, so they paid attention to things like rhythmic catchiness. Later translators have been less careful. This is the same quotation, taken from the 1966 Good News Bible:

Even if I go through the deepest darkness, I will not be afraid

Yuck. Yuck, yuck, yuck. The rhythm there is terrible: dull, boring, monotonous. A huge pile up of little unstressed syllables followed by two horrific clunks and a tail-off into limp blether. Is it memorable? I’ve forgotten it already. Coolio would struggle to fit it into even the most outré rap.

So rhythm makes a difference. A good copywriter knows this, and works to make sure that his copy sounds right. The secret of good rhythm, often, is to choose good, concrete words and listen to the way they work within a sentence. Variation in your sentence lengths helps too, but the main thing is to hear your copy. In many senses, copywriting is quite a musical business, and to be a good copywriter you need a good ‘ear’ for the weight of words. Reading aloud often helps.

It’s worth stressing (ha!) that as far as most copywriters are concerned rhythm is something that happens subconsciously. Only poets and really obsessive prose writers sit around thinking about the precise weight and stress of every word. But when you read you copy aloud it should sound conversational, supple and varied. Those are the signs that you’ve got a good rhythmic flow.