Writing Tip: Listen with your Mind

I’ve always been musical. I spoke in full sentences by the age of eighteen months and sang made-up songs as a child. I play piano by ear—I hear a song and can sit down at the piano and pluck out the notes. When I began writing my first novel, Sour Lemon and Sweet Tea, I often heard words swirling in my head faster than I could write. I closed my eyes and typed, listening for the inflection of the words I wanted to create on the page.

I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to cuddle up with a good book, so lately I’ve turned to audiobooks to satisfy my desire to read. A few months ago, I submitted a chapter to an agent who recommended I vary my sentence structure. Honestly, I had no idea how to fix my writing until I began to listen to the voice inflections in these audio presentations. Sentence structure is like the rhythm of a song. Sometines it flowed freely, but other times each sentence started and ended the same way, creating choppy sentence structure. It was like listening to a song without rhythm!

Through listening, you hear how one character paints the description of another. For example, sun dripped from her golden hair, and I held my breath. Or light reflected off the flakes of gold in her eyes stirring an awareness inside me I hadn’t anticipated. Reading those words, you understand the tension, but when you hear the actor hold his breath or raise his voice, you feel the tension.

Next time you’re filled with writer’s block or don’t know how to fix a struggling scene, try listening to a number of different audiobooks. Let your mind wander through the channels of the Florida Keys or down the long snowy highway of Montana. Let your senses taste the saltwater pressed against your lips or smell the hay in the trough. Then, sit down and write your scene, listening to your own characters as they describe your words.