Every great speech contains rhythm, and more than one rhythm. As in music rhythm acts very strongly on the subconscious of listeners; it can
An audience cannot abide the same voice for too long.
make them excited or reflective, happy or angry, playful or serious and, above all, a strong rhythm keeps them in step with you.
Although there are particular devices which help to generate rhythm (notably repetition and using words in pairs) most speeches develop their rhythm by using simple words and using them logi-
cally. That means grouping words tightly, so that each
group represents one complete thought. To illustrate this I took extra care over the last paragraph. If I break it down into its separate clauses and phrases, you should see that each one finishes off a particular thought and allows the next one to express another thought: every great
speech contains rhythm and more than one rhythm. As in music rhythm acts
very strongly on the subconscious of listeners; it can make them excited or
reflective, happy or angry, playful or serious and, above all [not a thought but
a warning to pay attention], a strong rhythm keeps them in step with you. It is not poetry, but that paragraph is easy to speak aloud.
I could have written that first paragraph differently as:
“
The presence of rhythm, and indeed of more than one rhythm, is a mark of every great speech. Rhythm, in terms of creating moods of excitement or reflection, happiness or anger, playfulness or serious- ness, as in music, acts strongly on the subconscious of listeners. A strong rhythm, it should be emphasized, is instrumental in creating a strong linkage between listeners and yourself.”
Try speaking that aloud. I have broken the link between ideas and groups of words, and forced you to reach the end of a meandering sentence before you know what you have said, and I have probably left you gasping for breath. If you look again at my bad paragraph, you will notice that I severed the sub- ject from the main verb. This is sheer cruelty: subjects and main verbs love being together and if you keep them together you will go a long way to cre- ating happy, rhythmic sentences.
Other groups of words also like to be kept together, although not as pas- sionately as subject and verb. If you have a group of words in a sentence which modifies its subject or its verb or its object it will probably read best if it stays close to the thing it modifies, and if it stays close to other
Every great speech contains rhythm, and more than one rhythm.
groups of words doing the same job. Try out this sentence: ‘Felix the Cat delighted American movie audiences, who recognized, in his endless ingenuity and unquenchable optimism, a kindred spirit and a symbol of the age.’ I hope you find it jerky and unhappy. Try it again as: ‘Endlessly ingenious and unquenchably optimistic, Felix the Cat delighted American movie audiences who recognized him as a kindred
spirit and a symbol of the age.’ I hope you find it flows better when the words modifying Felix are moved alongside him.
If any sentence does not seem to have the right rhythm, or any at all, try first cutting out the dead wood (see Chapter 10). If that has not cured the problem, try rearranging the word order until it does. It will probably make more sense as well.
Now read the passage by John Donne in the Appendix. Read it aloud. Donne was a great poet who also became a legendary preacher; the passage is part of a sermon to a packed congregation at old St Paul’s. Notice the intense rhythms as you speak it, notice too how they are built on simple language. Notice in particular that Donne achieves his most dramatic change of rhythm by the five simplest words in the passage: ‘now God comes to thee’. Notice finally that each cluster of words represents one thought, and that although many of the sentences are long the subjects are always close to their main verbs.
If you organize simple words logically, and listen to yourself as you do so, you should find yourself creating effective, rhythmic passages to speak. However if you are particularly interested in rhythm, you may find it worth- while to do two special exercises.
The first is to mark the places in a passage of writing where you would expect you (or your speaker) to draw breath. They should fall at the end of a phrase or complete sentence, and, in a rhythmic passage, they should fall at regular intervals. A change in these intervals should mean a deliberate change of rhythm, but if the breathing intervals are all over the place then the speech has probably lost its rhythm.
The second is to write out the passage as lines of poetry. Go further and mark in the long and short syllables and where the main stresses fall. In a
Subjects and main verbs love being together .
rhythmic passage you should see lines of a similar length, and some sort of pattern in the syllables and stresses.