I’m going to add pretty much anything by Simon and Garfunkel. Hell, this is another list that could go on forever. The underlying point is that when you marry great lyrics to great music, the result is a response to the art that is unequaled by books, paintings, sculpture, film, etc. I mean really, passionate as you are about any of those things, do they touch you in the same way as your favorite music. Okay, there are always exceptions, sure. But there’s a visceral reaction to music that most people I talk to about this—and it’s a favorite topic of mine, you can be sure—readily acknowledge. 

And, if I may, it comes both in the consumption and creation of music. I’m close to this since I also ­makemusic. In fact, as I write this, I’m listening to a composition I’m writing. Love it!

What has all this to do with fiction, you ask? Well, despite there being nothing audible about a book—save audio books, themselves—the language on the page can (and should) be evocative of the best music, or in other words . . . lyrical. 

I did another straw poll on novels that do this well. Here’s what folks had to say:

 

• THE NAME OF THE ROSE –Umberto Eco

• THE HANDMAID’S TALE –Margaret Atwood

• THE LAST UNICORN –Peter S. Beagle

• DAUGHTER OF THE FOREST –Juliet Marlier

• DOORWAYD IN THE SAND –Roger Zelazny

• SHADOW OF THE WIND –Carlos Ruiz Zafon

• VERONICA –Nicolas Christopher

• Edgar Allen Poe

• Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry series

• MYTHAGO WOOD –Robert Holdstock

• THE LAST WESTERN –Thomas Klise

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I’m throwing in Pat Rothfuss’s THE NAME OF THE WIND. And, what kind of writer would I be if I didn’t mention Shakespeare. Obligatory, you cry! No, really. I do love Shakespeare. I didn’t at first. But now, I kind of marvel. And then I have to say, also, Mr. Stephen King. King gets at this through such amazing voice. He has a turn of phrase that makes me go right along with him into whatever dark corner he decides. The creep.

 

Lastly, Ray Bradbury. For my money, better than them all.

Okay, so now think about this. Songs have a kind of structure that other art forms mostly don’t. In large part, it boils down repetition. I’ve written about this before in other articles in this series. Here, the neat thing to consider is how the lyrics in a song that come during a verse, or bridge, or especially a chorus can (or should) carry a desired effect. In song-terms, a chorus, for instance, is usually intended to provide some release of tension that’s been built from prior verses and bridges and such. It drives a point home, and is usually the most memorable part of the tune. 

Similarly, in fiction, think about your climactic scenes, right? If you’re reading this you likely know about try/fail cycles. If not, quickly, it’s the engine of most narratives, wherein (did I just write wherein?) your character is trying to do something and must fail several times before the book’s end. This provides the story some tension and drama. The fail part is often at least somewhat climactic, meaning there’s been some build up for us to see if our hero’s going to succeed at this or that. The big SUCCEED at the end of the book is our final climax. Of course, not all writers choose success for their main character at the book’s end, but we’ll not talk about those cynical buggers.

So, a chorus can be something like the repeated attempts of your character to achieve the object of his or her desire—the solution to your story’s central question and probably the main conceit of your book. Taken a step further, as a writer you may also find the literal repetition of some passage of language to have a powerful effect in your story. I did this in a short story once, where a midwife uttered some words over a mother giving birth to a child that would come stillborn; that mother goes on to become a midwife herself, and at the story’s climax, she repeats the words she heard during her own hour of duress. I had a lot of nice comments on the resonance of that for my readers.

Still, though, how do you choose the right words. As readers—and as writers, too—we often like to have words put to some feeling or experience that express it in a way we hadn’t considered before. You know what I’m talking about. You read something and say, “Just so.” Well, you say that if you have an English degree like I do. Probably, you actually say, “Hell yeah!” or “Damn straight!” or “Exactly!”

Part and parcel of this (you know, I should never have gotten that English degree), is reading something about a place or thing about which you have no personal knowledge or experience to ground your reaction, but you find yourself feeling like it’s absolutely right or true. I remember reading in one of Stephen King’s Dark Tower books a scene where a character kind of portals in to a vacant lot in New York City. The description was so impactful that I ran and made my mom read it. It just blew me away. I’d never been to New York, but I pined to go and see a vacant lot strewn with broken glass, ya know?

It’s transportative (“transportative” is a neologism, a new coinage, I made that crap up—but I like it better than transportive.) You understand my meaning, yes? 

So, now I’m going to dig back into my vaunted collegial days and talk about actual poetry as a way to illustrate this. Bear with me—there be dragons back there.

​

I’m sitting in a poetry class one day, and we read “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Willams. It goes a little sumthin’ like this:

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so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.

 

This was extolled as one of the finest poems ever written. Later, I picked up my jaw. I was young and brash and argumentative, so I contended with this assertion. In response, the professor asked us all to think about what we saw when we read the poem and be ready to share it the next day in class. We went round—literally, because this prof was an old Berkeley guy, and made us sit in a big circle—and tell what imagery the poem evoked in our minds. This is where I realized that most of my classmates were only nominally invested in this poetry course. I don’t say that as criticism; I think we all took it because it was a required course, or something. And so, we got a lot of folks regurgitating the adjectives and nouns of The Red Wheelbarrow in a different order to give their mental and/or emotional picture of the poem. Then the prof—who I can best describe as a mudslide—gets to me. And I open my mouth without a damn clue, when I realize that when I read this little collection of words, I did see something kind of specific. Damn specific. And I just must have assumed everyone saw the same thing and that it didn’t amount to much.

​

Near as I can recollect, what fell out of my mouth—to my own minor astonishment—was this: “It’s not fire-engine red, or Coke can red, or hooker-hot lipstick red. It’s rust-red. The wheelbarrow is completely rusted. It’s been pushed up on its wheel-guard, so that the handles lean up high against the wall of a ramshackle shack; this keeps the rain from pooling in the bottom, which doesn’t make much sense, since it’s already rusted to hell. But the graveyard caretaker does it that way—leans it up against his caretaker shack in between the digging of graves. Because this wheelbarrow hauls around displaced grave dirt and such. And right now, the rain is kind of washing off some of the mud from the last grave he dug. And this caretaker—an old lonely guy who people never seem to see (I can’t even see him) keeps a few chickens, since his salary at the graveyard doesn’t amount to much, and the eggs help him get by okay …”

​

The class—no foolin’—is dead quiet when I stop talking. I think I hit a kind of trance as I was relating what I’d seen the whole time and just took for granted after reading this poem. Could be, they were a little scared of my interpretation—I was reading a lot of King at the time. I think more than anything, it was just: “Dude, the poem’s only sixteen words. How’d you get all that?” The answer is: I have no friggin’ idea. Except that I think a lot of us see stuff when lyrical words enter our brains. Could come as a poem, or as great lyrics to a song, or as prose that carries the sensibilities of poetry and lyrics—and it’s all lyricism, at least in my mind.

​

Now, a lot of writers have told me they expressly cannot listen to music with lyrics when they write, because the words interfere with their process. I get this. Then again, there are plenty of writers who can. Neither writer-type is better than the other. But with few exceptions, what I have learned is that most writers have an affinity for music—and not the inane-lyric kind—which also makes perfect sense to me, since I think the words and stories carried upon a tune remind them of the kind of prose they like and desire themselves to create.

​

Still, how do you do it? Well, this will be somewhat individual to the writer, right? But there are a few tools that I think can help. Things like:

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• Once you’re done, read the work out loud. Listening to it will help you hear where it falls flat or sounds decidedly unmusical

• Avoid consonant groupings

• Look for onomatopoeic words—words that sound like what they’re describing—but not ones that your readers can’t pronounce or that they don’t comprehend

• Try seeing the familiar in a new light. See your inner wheelbarrow (that’s another new coinage that I rather like and will start to use henceforward). If you can write what you really see, I’m betting not only will people understand, they’ll be interested. But you’ve got to use that mind’s eye. More fun, too.

• Find the voice of your character. Lots of ways to do this, but considering things like: what is my character’s background, what matters most to him, what’s his worldview, what problems does he face. Such things help you get at voice.

• ​

To finish up, then—and for me—music is at its best when it’s married with great lyrics. Yes, that can be a matter of opinion, but if you start by excluding what we can all likely agree are bad lyrics, what we’re left with is a pool of relative awesomeness. Likewise, fiction is at its best when it’s lyrical. Lyricism in your fiction shouldn’t get in the way of story or comprehension, but neither should you grow lazy in the words you put down. Sometimes, fiction writers balk at this idea, and will decry it with chants of: “Purple prose!” Well, yes. Purple prose—overly florid writing—is not a good thing. That is decidedly not what I’m talking about here. Rather, language that flows well, where word choice and rhythm give the story added resonance. It could be there difference between your reader finishing your book, and remembering it.