Tag Archives: rhythm

Rhythm: Mem Fox

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Mem Fox (we love Mem Fox) is a children’s book author of some repute. She’s a titan of children’s writing, for one thing. For another, she’s the reason I know that Australia is a real place*.

On her website she has videos about how to read picture books and if you ever attend a talk she gives, she’ll tell you how to write picture books. I don’t mean the normal bit about having a writing place and writing every day. Fox pays special attention to the cadence of words, and structures both word choice and story communication for a particularly lyrical experience. Each book is like a song.

One of the stories she told, that has stuck with me, is that she argued for a long word in a picture book. Toe to toe, nose to nose, fighting for her right as an artist.

She explained it a little softer than that, making the argument that children fall in love with the sound of words. They can figure out the meaning later. Her story required a three-syllable word in exactly the right spot, and the finished book was perfect when read aloud.

When I am writing within a character’s voice, their diction is my word choice, and I can’t betray their voice by choosing a word I think is easier to understand. Or a reference that is more accessible. It must make sense for that character.

The caveat is that I am aware that the diction will say things about the character. If the reference is too old, I need a reason for that character to be older than the target audience, or if the word is obscure, that character had better have a good reason to know it.

*At a conference, I eagerly picked up Possum Magic. It’s one of those childhood books that I know so well I can read the words off the page and my heart. As I turned the pages, I noticed the word lamingtons. Now, as an adult, I know that word. It’s important to note that I grew up in the Mojave Desert and for much of my developmental years, possums were considered mythical creatures. I mean, so were cows.


I had always read Possum Magic as a fanciful story about a magical possum in a made-up land and at the ripe old age of thirty, I brutally discovered that it had taken place in Australia. I called my mother.


I asked if she remembered Possum Magic and how much I loved that story. And she said yes, how I loved that story. I asked if she remembered how I thought it took place in a magical far-off land. She said yes.


I asked at what point in my development did she plan to tell me that Australia was real? And she laughed and laughed.


There is no betrayal like parental betrayal.

Rhythm: The Stop

100 Day Project, Uncategorized, Writing, , , ,

Gilmore Girls’ actress, Alexis Bledel, once talked about using a dialog coach to practice for the high-paced chatter style of Amy Pace’s drama. I assume everyone else did, too, but the article I read when I was in my teen fan binge period had a picture of Rory.


I really enjoyed Gilmore Girls while it ran on TV for a few reasons. My mom and I could watch something that wasn’t Murder She Wrote for the Third Time and it had enough angst to soothe my tortured teenage soul.


Years later, I caught a similar affected rhythm in Life, starring Damien Lewis, a couple other great people, and a kickass ending that turned the show from a deep think mystery into an incredible character study.


It isn’t the rapid-fire back and forth that makes you sit up and listen to the characters in either show. It’s the sudden stop. That space is the impactful moment.


Consider Barns Courtney’s “99” if you don’t feel like watching roughly 7 seasons (all-together for Gilmore Girls and Life combined, minus the new Gilmore Girls. This could have been a footnote) of television. It slaps, but the neat parts are where the sound ceases and we continue into the next rollicking phrase.


The rapidfire exchange in prose has a different sudden stop. Either the long winding sentences have a sudden short interjection, or the short staccato style sentences give way suddenly to a long, winding, run-on sentence of effervescent vowels and sibilant consonants.


Consider, also, a helpless passenger in a getaway vehicle on a hilly road. Sometimes the impact is when you hit the ground; sometimes it’s when you launch into the air.

Rhythm: The Stop

100 Day Project, Uncategorized, Writing, , , ,

Gilmore Girls’ actress, Alexis Bledsoe, once talked about doing tongue twisters to practice for the high-paced chatter style of Amy Pace’s drama.
I typed that whole sentence off the top of my head. I really enjoyed Gilmore Girls while it ran on TV for a few reasons. My mom and I could watch something that wasn’t Murder She Wrote for the Third Time and it had enough angst to soothe my tortured teenage soul.


Years later, I caught the same affected rhythm in Life, starring Damien Lewis, a couple other great people, and a kickass ending that turned the show from a deep think mystery into an incredible character study.
It isn’t the rapid-fire back and forth that makes you sit up and listen to the characters in either show. It’s the sudden stop. That space is the impactful moment.


Consider Barns Courtney’s “99” if you don’t feel like watching roughly 7 seasons (all-together for Gilmore Girls and Life combined, minus the new Gilmore Girls. This could have been a footnote) of television. It slaps, but the neat parts are where the sound ceases and we continue into the next rollicking phrase.


The rapidfire exchange in prose has a different sudden stop. Either the long winding sentences have a sudden short interjection, or the short staccato style sentences give way suddenly to a long, winding, run-on sentence of effervescent vowels and sibilant consonants.


Consider, also, a helpless passenger in a getaway vehicle on a hilly road. Sometimes the impact is when you hit the ground; sometimes it’s when you launch into the air.

Rhythm: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

100 Day Project, Uncategorized, Writing, , , , ,

One of the seminal alphabet learning books in the last century was, without a doubt, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. I have waited a lifetime to be able to write that sentence.


Every year there’s probably around a couple hundred alphabet books or language basics books published in the world. They won’t change. In the USA at least, the alphabet is pretty set.


Each of these books must be different in order to hit the market and that difference is something value added. For children’s books for tiny humans that are such basic building blocks of tiny-human knowledge, there are certain things that can make them stand out:

  1. Audience participation
  2. A story
  3. Playing with the construction of a children’s book in general

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom has all three. While the book has a story, starring kids being daring, silly, and having just a little more hope than sense, it’s 1 and 3 that make the book a classic. By “construction of a children’s book” I mean interesting page turns, something in the illustrations that make the story re-readable (think Where’s Waldo), or a novel rhythm. Years before I was commanded to learn to read music (long story) Chicka Chicka Boom Boom introduced me to the wonderfully unexpected stops and starts of jazz without the complication of a wind section, or my ongoing rivalry with the trumpets (short story but not the place).


As for 1. Audience participation, the title of the work is meant to be read but the refrain is a delight to shout. Usually with a crowd.


Most of us are introduced to music on a bone-deep level, even if it isn’t via formal study. We can read prose and poetry, in the way we can hear the sounds that also have been sung to, or around us.


To mix up your rhythm, listen to music. Steal with wild, respectful abandon. Listen to your words in a voice that is not your own, even if only in the confines of your own head.