The Music of Language
How rhythm, cadence, and silence shape the way we write — and the way we feel what’s written
As a young reader, I devoured comic books, science fiction novels, and Mad Magazine — not to mention the Sunday paper. By the time I hit my teens, my reading diet had expanded: National Lampoon, Creepy and Eerie, National Geographic, Life and Look, and the occasional Playboy (for the articles! 😇😂). There was always something to read in our house.
Alongside that steady stream of words came a growing love of music — mostly rock and roll, but every now and then I’d slip on a Johnny Cash album or something from my parents’ collection, which, at the time, felt about as old-fashioned as a horse and buggy. Frankly, even listening to Elvis or Chuck Berry felt like the distant past and I gave it nothing more than a shrug.
Without realizing it, all of that input — the books, the magazines, the lyrics spinning on my turntable — shaped how I experienced language. I couldn’t have articulated it then, but I was discovering that words have rhythm. They have cadence and flow. They move on the page the way a melody moves through a song — sometimes gracefully, sometimes stumbling, but always carrying a beat beneath them.
And sometimes they don’t flow. Sometimes words get stuck, like boots in mud. Sentences strain, trying to find their tune, struggling to release whatever they’re holding back.
What the heck am I talking about?
I once read that Tom Robbins would spend hours — sometimes an entire day — crafting a single sentence by hand. Maybe more. Take this segment from his novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues:
“Jelly is sitting in the outhouse. She has been sitting there longer than necessary. The door is wide open and lets in the sky. Or, rather, a piece of the sky, for on a summer's day in Dakota the sky is mighty big. Mighty big and mighty blue, and today there is hardly a cloud. What looks to be a wisp of cloud is actually the moon, narrow and pale like a paring snipped from a snowman's toenail. The radio is broadcasting The Silver Dollar Polka.”
Read it once. Then read it aloud. It flows. It sings. It makes sense to the ears as much as to the senses. To me, Robbins’s sentences have an internal music, a natural rhythm that invites you in. You can almost hear him feeling his way forward, shaping meaning while shaping sound.
Writers have always done this, whether consciously or not. Some sentences sing. Others punch. Every writer carries a rhythm that comes from within; you can hear it if you slow down and listen.
Four Writers, Four Rhythms
Ernest Hemingway writes like a drummer keeping tight time:
“The cold wind came down from the north and the snow blew across the bay into the town. Liz liked Jim very much. She liked it the way he walked over from the blacksmith shop. She liked it the way he held his head. She liked everything about Jim.”
— Up in Michigan (1923)
His prose snaps. Short, clipped sentences. Deliberate repetition. A percussive beat stripped to essentials. Urgent. Insistent.
John Steinbeck, on the other hand, leans into melody:
“Morgan’s boyhood was a cold slow dream. The little stone house crouched like a beast against the hills, and the sea roared faintly in the distance.”
— Cup of Gold (1929)
Steinbeck’s sentences swell and recede, like the tides he so often writes about. Where Hemingway marches, Steinbeck flows.
Toni Morrison writes in layered chords — resonant, haunting:
“124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children.”
— Beloved (1987)
Her rhythm is ceremonial, deliberate. Each line lands like a drumbeat, vibrating with weight far beyond the words themselves.
Isabel Allende, by contrast, writes with an undercurrent that carries you along:
“Barrabás came to us by sea, the child who was destined to be our companion for many years. His arrival heralded a time of storms and strange happenings.”
— The House of the Spirits (1982)
Allende’s sentences glide, lyrical and immersive. They pull you into her storytelling as if borne on a current.
Four writers. Four rhythms:
Hemingway → percussion — tight, urgent beats
Steinbeck → melody — slow, swelling phrases
Morrison → chords — layered and resonant
Allende → flow — lyrical and immersive
Each crafts sentences that don’t just say something — they sound like something.
Finding My Own Rhythm
There’s no way I would dare compare myself to these writers, but I do strive for pacing — a rhythm, a cadence — even when I’m not consciously chasing it. Here’s a passage from Forged in Ancient Fire, where Jia sits outside an apartment, uncertain of her next move:
No lights were on in the building, and she didn’t feel like knocking. She still had no idea what she would find. The once intense impulse that had gripped Jia an hour ago had evaporated. She was uncertain about what to do next. She let out a mirthless chuckle at the thought that somehow coming here would magically bring out Ji-Won.
Across the street from the apartment entrance, a small parking garage beckoned. Jia scanned the area, noticing a modest pathway sheltered under a slanted roof. After quickly looking around to ensure she wasn’t being watched, she slipped between a couple of cars and perched on the curb, giving her a clear view of number 84.
Do nothing. See what happens.
Here, the sentences are short, quiet, deliberate. The silence between them does as much work as the words. I’m not aiming for melody or percussion so much as tension in the pause — letting the unsaid hum beneath the surface.
Because sometimes, in both music and writing, it’s the rest notes that matter most.
But there’s something else, too. Rhythm isn’t just about how sentences sound — it’s about how they feel. A perfectly paced paragraph can make your heart race or calm you like a lullaby. It can make you hold your breath without even realizing it. That’s the magic I chase when I write: not just telling a story, but scoring an experience for the reader.
When I listen to music — whether it’s a reggae groove, a jagged rock riff, or a Johnny Cash love tale put to country music — I’m always aware of the spaces between the notes. Writing works the same way. Sometimes a sentence needs to sprint. Sometimes it needs to linger. And sometimes, it needs to stop entirely and let the silence carry the weight.
I think we learn this rhythm over a lifetime — from comic books and Mad Magazine, from novels and National Geographic, from lyrics we can’t get out of our heads. All those words and beats, absorbed over years, become part of our inner metronome. When we sit down to write, we’re not just stringing words together. We’re composing.
So I read Hemingway and hear percussion. I read Steinbeck and hear melody. Morrison writes in chords; Allende carries me on a current. Lee Child’s Reacher series builds tension like a taut symphony. And somewhere in that, I find my own rhythm — the pauses, the unsaid, the hum beneath the surface.
Maybe that’s the joy of writing, really: learning to listen. Listening to the music of other writers, listening to the rhythms of language, and ultimately, listening to ourselves.
Because when the words finally fall into place — when the cadence is just right — you don’t just read it.
You feel it.