The trees began to thin, and we came out onto the edge of a clearing; and in the same moment the harvest moon, which had been veiled by thunder-rack, sailed out into a lake of clear sky. Ragged silver wings of cloud formed the shores of the lake, and beyond the fringe of hazel and hawthorn that still lay between us and open ground, a milky mane of moonlight flowed over the clearing. Everything was very still; even the nighttime sounds of the forest had fallen away, so that it was as though everything waited with held breath. For maybe three heartbeats of time the stillness endured.
—Rosemary Sutcliff, The Shining Company
This passage paints a beautiful picture of utter stillness, of expectancy and a coming change (indeed, it immediately precedes the scene that sets all the other events in the story into motion). But it’s not just the meaning of the words that makes the paragraph work on us like this; the words themselves affect our sense that something important is about to happen. Let’s look at what Sutcliff did to achieve that sense of coherence and expectancy.
First, she uses lots of high-energy vowels: long a, long e, and short i sounds. These “high” vowel sounds, spoken in the front of the mouth, with the lips tight, create a sense of energy or tension.
Second, she predominantly uses liquid consonant sounds (m, n, r, l, and w). Liquids connect words, because their sounds continue, lingering in the mouth. They lend a feel of (what else?) fluidity, softness, and hushed quiet.
I’ve copied Sutcliff’s paragraph below, highlighting the words with these sounds. Words in bold have a high-energy vowel sound in them. Words in italic have liquid consonants in them. Words in bold italic have both a high-energy vowel and a soft consonant sound in them. (I did not highlight articles or conjunctions.)
The trees began to thin, and we came out onto the edge of a clearing; and in the same moment the harvest moon, which had been veiled by thunder-rack, sailed out into a lake of clear sky. Ragged silver wings of cloud formed the shores of the lake, and beyond the fringe of hazel and hawthorn that still lay between us and open ground, a milky mane of moonlight flowed over the clearing. Everything was very still; even the nighttime sounds of the forest had fallen away, so that it was as though everything waited with held breath. For maybe three heartbeats of time the stillness endured.
Wow. Do you see that? Almost every word in these four sentences contains either a high-energy vowel or a liquid consonant—or both! By using the same kinds of sounds throughout this paragraph, Sutcliff weaves her description together, gives it a feeling of continuity, of belonging together. Repeating these sounds also reinforces the sense of impending crisis and irrevocable change.
Words are made up of sound and meaning. If as a writer, I know the properties of different sounds and how they contribute to (and even create) meaning, I can choose not just a good word but the best word–a word whose sound reinforces the meaning and mood I want to convey.
