The two-line summary for busy people
Short sentences give you speed, long sentences give you weight.
Consistent material stacks up the reader’s expectation, and odd material breaks it and stirs curiosity
Writing that’s fun to read has rhythm. A piece of writing isn’t a song, so rhythm may sound like a strange thing to ask for, but it’s what makes writing exciting too.
Rhythm is even easier to build in writing than in a song. You only have two dials: sentence length and how the story unfolds. A piece with good rhythm is a rollercoaster. It gets the reader excited. So here’s how to write one.
The first secret of rhythm is pacing. Pacing means going fast, then slow, then fast again. The fun of a rollercoaster is the fast drop. But a coaster that drops the moment it leaves the station is less of a thrill, because it never climbed slowly and stacked up the tension. So it climbs high and slow first, builds the tension, then drops fast and turns that tension into a rush. That’s pacing.
The second secret, pattern breaking, is ‘a flow that builds an expectation and then breaks it’. A course that’s fun the first time gets boring if it keeps going. Even the best rollercoaster gets dull fast when it repeats the same course. To keep it from getting dull, something has to change against expectation. If it dropped once at the start, then next it should drop several times, or spin. That way there’s no room for boredom, and you look forward to what’s next. That’s pattern breaking.
Rhythm in writing comes from those same two things, pacing and pattern breaking. Look at them on two levels, the sentence and the flow.
Start by cutting your sentences short, and go long only when you want weight. Make the first sentence short above all. A long sentence before you’ve caught the reader’s interest feels like work. People read in units of sentences. So a long sentence means a long breath from the reader. A long breath is slow, but it holds their attention. A short sentence is a short breath, and it reads clean. All long sentences and the piece crawls. The reader feels stuck. All short sentences and it’s monotonous. The writing keeps breaking off. So mix a long sentence in among the short ones. It reads clean and still connects. This paragraph does it. One subject and one predicate per sentence, with a complex sentence dropped in between. The lengths break the pattern, so the writing is easy and fun. It has rhythm. And once you’ve built rhythm by varying the length, you can put weight on the ending by writing a last sentence long enough to be slightly hard work, like this one, which runs past the point where you expected it to stop and only lets go at the end. Look. That’s the power of rhythm.
Second, the flow of a piece breaks the reader’s expectation right around when they get comfortable. (Reports are the exception, since they go in order of importance.) Take a story built on ki-seung-jeon-gyeol (setup, development, turn, resolution). The ‘ki’ and the ‘seung’ develop the story. Along the way the reader settles into it. But once they’re settled, the story becomes predictable. A predictable story is boring. So break their expectation at the ‘jeon’. Take the coaster that was climbing and drop it.
A reader whose expectation just shattered is surprised. They want to know what happened, so they focus on the piece. That’s how pattern breaking pulls a reader in.
Here’s an example about my coworkers. (ki) On our dev team, working late is the norm. (seung) So Jo, the product planner, lives on americanos. Oh, the manager, walks in every morning holding a latte, and Lee, a developer, drinks a Hot6 energy drink every evening. Everyone frowns their way to 10pm on caffeine. (jeon) But Baek, another developer, has been up all night for a week with no coffee at all. He’s even smiling the whole time. Aren’t you curious why Baek is the only one who’s different? Because he’s the break in our expectation. Break the reader’s expectation like that and curiosity appears. Curiosity keeps them reading. That’s the power of the break.
I use this example in class a lot. Students who were looking at their phones lift their heads and look at me the moment Baek comes up. That’s how strong a break is.
Now you can write with rhythm too. You can write something a reader enjoys. Keep two things in mind. First, short sentences give you speed and long sentences give you weight. Second, consistent material stacks up the reader’s expectation, and odd material breaks it and stirs curiosity. Pacing and pattern breaking. Got it? Congratulations. From here on, people listen when you talk.
For anyone still wondering how Baek is holding up, here’s the answer. (gyeol) He’s quitting next month. He’s moving to a much better company. His momentum is hope. That’s the ‘gyeol’, the part that closes a story and leaves something behind. How to build a good ‘gyeol’ is the next post. Follow me and I’ll let you know when it’s up.