Lately, I’ve been focusing my studies on words. Not story. Words. Specifically, how to put them together to write a pleasing sentence. Now, I am by no means a literary writer. My prose is not elevated, but there is something to be said about knowing how to write a sentence your readers don’t stumble over. My goal for my stories is to pull readers into them so they don’t realize they are just reading words. If people stumble over a sentence, that immediately pulls them from the story. Today, I’d like to dig into one aspect of crafting sentences: how the sounds of letters affect story tone.
Phonetics
In my research on writing prose, I read or heard over and over that writers can select words to enhance their story. Yet no one could tell me what that meant. When two words mean the same thing, what makes one a better pick for that sentence? What makes a word feel harsh or calm? My questions were often answered by examples, yet no one could clearly tell me why those examples worked better. Then one day, a teacher said something about the sound of the words conveyed feeling. My brain immediately jumped back to my linguistics degree, and I suddenly got it.
Phonetics is the study of the sounds of language, and it breaks up letters into specific categories depending on how they sound. Using these categories, you can easily see how certain letters can be grouped together to make sounds that generally point to a specific emotion. Plosives, for example, are a category of letters that require a harsh release of breath and a quick stop (think p, t, and k). Obviously, these letter will evoke more harsh emotions: anger, frustration, urgency, etc.
I’ll try to keep my linguistics nerd in check so I don’t bore anyone, but thinking of these categories helped me understand how word choice can affect tone and, therefore, emotion in a story. I’ll explain the basic categories in simple terms for anyone who wants to understand how sounds of words can enhance stories. Hopefully, it will help you write pleasing sentences that readers fall into instead of stumble around.
Vowels
Vowels are letters that are said without obstruction to the airflow. These include: a, e, i, o, and u. Also note, the letter y often acts as a vowel that can take on an e or i sound. I’m going to focus on two types of vowels: short and long. If you want more ways to classify vowels, there are categories like high, low, front, back, rounded, spread, etc. Feel free to look them up and think about how each of these categories make you feel when you hear the sound.
I don’t want to confuse anyone with phonetic symbols for each sound so I will generalize by using the letter of the alphabet that most people would associate with the sound. If you want to get further into this, there are 44 phonemes in the English language that you can dig into on your own time.
Short Vowels
Short vowels have a relatively short or quick sound. Typically, this is what most people think of as the default sound for each vowel.
- a as in hit
- e as in men
- i as in fish
- o as in cross
- u as in pull
- u as in rush
You’ll notice I have two examples for the letter u, but if you say the words out loud you will hear there is a difference. They have separate phonetic symbols, but I am generalizing both as u for simplicity’s sake. The first u has a higher tone while the second has a lower one, but both are short sounds.
Long Vowels
Long vowels are generally when the vowel sound is held out, and this typically happens when there is more than one vowel in the word. These vowels are a lot more difficult to understand so I’m going to really generalize.
First, vowels can combine to make one long vowel sound. These run together to create a diphthong (a two-vowel sound like in paid where the vowel sounds like you are saying the letters A-E) or a triphthong (a three-vowel sound like in royal where the vowel sounds like O-I-A). Second, one vowel in the word might go silent while the other says its name. See the list below for examples.
- a as in take
- e as in feet
- i as in kite
- o as in pole
- u as in use
There is a lot more to long vowels, but I’m going to leave you with just that. If two or more vowel sounds are next to each other or a vowel says its name, then it’s a long vowel.
Consonants
Consonants are letters that typically have some obstruction to the airflow from things like the tongue, teeth, and lips. These are letters such as: b, c, m, r, s, etc. There are several ways to classify these letters, but I’m going to focus on three groups: plosives, fricatives, and nasals.
Plosives
Plosives, also called Stops, are letters that require a full obstruction of the vocal track followed by a quick release of the air. These letters sound like a popping sound and are: k, g, p, b, t, and d.
They come in pairs because two will share the same shape of the mouth, but one is voiceless and the other is voiced. For instance, you can say the k and g sound without changing your mouth’s position, but the k doesn’t use the vocal cords and the g does. Voiceless plosives are k, p, and t. Voiced are g, b, and d.
Fricatives
Fricatives are sounds that force air through narrow paths. These include: f, th, s, sh, h, v, z, and j. Fricatives often make a buzzing sound and are often held out longer.
Except for the letter h, fricatives can be paired in voiceless and voiced. Voiceless are: f, th, s, and sh. Voiced are: v, th, z, and j. If you’re paying close attention, you’ll see I listed th twice. This is because it has two sounds. There is the voiceless version heard in the word thanks, and there’s the voiced version heard in the word than.
Nasals
Nasals direct the airflow through the nose instead of the mouth, creating a humming sound. There are only three of these: m, n, and ng.
To clarify the last one, ng usually only appears at the end of a word, such as sing. You may see the word singer and think it’s the same sound, but it isn’t. Listen to yourself pronounce the word sing and then singer. The g is not a separate sound in sing, but it is in singer (sing-ger). The nasal ng doesn’t emphasize the g. Instead, it hints at it but stops before fully forming the plosive sound.
Sounds And Emotions
If you’ve made it this far in my post, you’ve made it through my linguistic nerdiness and now get to see how to apply phonetics to your writing! Sounds can be linked to emotion; that’s why music is so powerful when paired with a movie scene. And phonetics is just listening to the music of words. It’s “what the dog hears” as Rebecca McClanahan put it in her book, Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively. We aren’t talking about the meaning of words but how they’d sound if muffled by a barrier so only the tones can be heard.
Short vowels and plosives will come across as harsh. They can be linked feelings like panic, excitement, surprise, etc. Any strong emotion that is linked with outward motion or a burst of energy will feel like these sounds.
Contrarily, long vowels and nasals has a calmer feel. They might pair better with subtle internal emotions like sadness, serenity, contentment, tiredness, etc. They are slower sounds for low energy feelings.
Then there are fricatives, which can play on both sides of emotions. The constant hissing or buzzing of the voiced sounds can lend to anxiety, business, or annoyance. But the voiceless ones can feel quiet, calming, or airy.
Example
You may be thinking this all sounds great, but how do I apply it? Let’s do a little exercise to really think of the phonetics of a word.
Let’s say we want to describe an ocean wave. What is one descriptor we can use? How about rolling? It’s a common word for waves. Let’s think about what the word rolling is doing phonetically. The r and l are liquids. (I know we didn’t cover that category, but liquids are sounds that are partially obstructed by the tongue and have a smooth sound.) Liquids are soft, lulling sounds. We also have a long vowel with the o, and a short vowel with the i. Lastly, there is the ng, which is a nasal. If you look at the sounds, they are all of the softer quality. The only harsh sound is the short vowel, but it’s sandwiched between two very soft sounds. These letters all work together to form a tranquil picture. The r rolls up to the o and then back down to the l, ending in a soft lingering way with the ng. It literally sounds like a wave cresting and then descending before it disappears back into the ocean.
But what if our scene is more tense than tranquil. We can use the word rolling to describe the ocean, but it will feel at odds with the tone and emotions of the scene. Instead, we need to find a harsher word for the wave. For instance, surged would give a different feel. The s is a fricative that flows into the long vowel u and the liquid r. But then the flow is abruptly stopped by the g (which is actually the sound of the fricative j) followed by the plosive d. The word literally builds with long letter sounds until it crashes with two harsh sounds, giving the feeling of impending destruction. Notice I also chose to use the -ed version of the word instead of the -ing. The latter would have made a softer feel if our aim was for the word to linger like the thing being described was still hanging over our heads (like an army surging toward us but not yet there).
Exercise
I hope the practical example helped show how the sounds of words can create emotion in your story. The best exercise you can do is write a simple description of your pet (or a person). Then rewrite that description using mostly short vowels, voiced fricatives, and plosives. Then do it once more with long vowels, voiceless fricatives, and nasals. Do the descriptions feel different when you read them aloud? How so? And how can you use that in your writing?
Final Thoughts
Hopefully, this was some good information for you to digest and consider for your writing. Think about what tone or emotions you want your scene to share with readers, then consider what word choices fit it. I know this is hard to do when you have a book of 80,000 words, but I promise it’s worth it. Even just making the decision to change one word in every paragraph to fit your scene’s mood will take your writing a long way. Or, you can just be more selective in the moments when emotional tension in the story is high. Whatever little step you take toward using the sounds of words to enhance your story tone will make you a better writer. After drilling it into your brain for a while, you may realize you don’t have to work so hard at it anymore.
Thanks for reading!
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