Nasals—n, m, ng—are sounded in the nose. Say inning, and you’ll see what I mean. You can feel the n and ng sounds at the top of the back of your throat, almost in your nose.

Sibilants—s, z, j (soft), th, sh, zh, ch, f, v, x—make a sort of hissing sound, and you can aspirate (i.e., protract) them as long as you have breath. Say hiss and hold that final s sound. And again, notice how our words for this kind of sound—hiss, sibilant—have the very sounds they’re describing embedded in the word.

Finally, liquids—l, r, w, m, n—create a fluidity or fluency of sound, like water running over rocks. (You already noticed, right? All those l’s and r’s that I used to describe this sound…)

All right, you say, that’s totally cool (because you’re a word nerd, so you would think so), but who cares? Why does it matter?

Let’s say you’re writing a bedtime story. Do you want to use a lot of stops? No, of course not. That would be jarring. You want to lull that child to sleep. So you use liquids and sibilants, sounds that can be drawn out. You use low energy vowels.

But if you’re writing a suspenseful scene in a story, do you want to use lots of sleepy liquids? Maybe, depending on the mood you want to evoke. If you want to create a sense of calm before the storm, liquids might be totally appropriate. But if you’re in the midst of the storm and there’s a lot going on, you can reinforce that with high-energy vowels and stop-and-start mutes.

You could use lots of sibilants to create a scene with hissing machinery, or to create the voice of a dragon.

Nasals would work well to reinforce the whiny little sister voice.

And so on.

Of course, there aren’t hard and fast rules about how to do this. But knowing about sounds can help you choose a better word in a given sentence or scene, a word that by its very sound reinforces the mood you’re trying to create.

Next time we’ll look at a passage from Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Shining Company that uses sound to great effect.

We all know that words are made up of letters. But I think we sometimes forget that they’re also made up of sounds. Let’s look at those sounds and why they matter. (Special thanks to Darcy Pattison, who first introduced me to the way sounds help create meaning.)

Today, we start with vowels. In English there are five vowels, right? A, e, i, o, and u.

Well, yes and no. There are five vowel letters. But in most English dialects there are 15 distinct vowel sounds. (The following list is entirely Kimberlee-centric; I included only those vowel sounds that I could distinguish as separate sounds, which is why only 13 are listed—I hear no difference in the sounds of “the” and “but” or of “cause” and “cop.” If you do, by all means, stick them back in!)

High Energy Vowels

• long e (as in tree)
• short i (as in sit)
• long a (as in say)

These are high sounds, spoken in the top of the mouth, with the face pulled taut. Try it. Say those sounds. Feel where they are in your mouth, what your face does as you say them. Feel their energy.

Midrange Vowels

• long i (as in glide)
• short e (pen)
• short a (cat)
• oi (toy)
• ow (cow)

These sounds are spoken in the middle of the mouth, with the face more relaxed. Go ahead. Say them. Feel where they are in your mouth, how your face relaxes as you go down that list.

Low Energy Vowels

• short o (cop)
• short u (but)
• long o (bone)
• short oo (book)
• long oo (tooth)

These are low sounds, spoken in the bottom of the mouth with the face relaxed. One more time. Say them. Feel them in your mouth, your face.

Okay, so this is all very interesting (okay, so it’s only interesting if you’re a total word nerd like me, but I’ll assume if you’re reading this that you, in fact, are), but who cares? How does it affect one’s writing?

Let’s look at how knowing about vowel sounds and their effects on our physiology (and thus our psychology) can make our writing stronger. Here’s the original version of the first sentence of chapter four of my novel:

The autumn I was seventeen, the nightmares were particularly frequent.

This sentence starts off an intense chapter, in which the narrator is nearly scared out of her mind—but though the sentence tells us a few things (the narrator’s age, the time of year, and that she’s suffering from bad dreams), it’s not, ahem, particularly compelling.

So, I decided to use these vowel sounds to revise it. I wanted to use as many high energy vowels as I could. Right away that got rid of every word but seventeen and frequent.

Now, the most important word in the sentence is nightmare, but it doesn’t have any high-energy vowel sounds. The only synonym I could think of was dream—and while the long e sound contributes high energy, dream doesn’t have the same connotations as nightmare. To use dream, I needed a strong verb that would make clear what kind of dreams these are. I came up with plagued (long a!).

Then I toyed with the rest of the sentence, trying to give it a few more high-energy sounds (there are a total of seven; eight if you pronounce the autumn as thee autumn). The revised version reads:

In the autumn of my eighteenth year, the dreams plagued me.

How’s that for a whole lot stronger? And all I did was tinker with the vowel sounds! Woot!

FORKS AND SPOONS

Sara looked up from her book to see her sister come to the door of their father’s study for the third time. Vicki’s hands were on her hips, and she was glowering at Sara. “Sara LeAnn! I’ve asked you twice already to set the table. I’m not going to ask you again.”

What a grump, Sara thought, rolling her eyes. She hated it when Vicki tried to act like Mama. She knew Vicki was annoyed. It was raining outside, and rain always made Vicki grouchy. Plus, today was Thursday, Vicki’s night to make dinner, and she hated cooking. She had been complaining for the past half hour because Mama was late from work. Now dinner was almost ready, so Vicki was whining that it would be cold by the time Mama got home.

Sara ignored her sister. She knew she should obey Vicki and set the table. But she just couldn’t right now: this Nancy Drew book was too exciting. Both times Vicki had come in to ask her to set the table, Sara had promised to come as soon as she finished her chapter. And she had intended to, but each chapter had ended so suspensefully that she had to start reading the next one to make sure Nancy didn’t get hit by a car or killed by the villain.

Sara now gave her sister the most pathetic look she could. “Just a few more pages, Vicki, please. I just have to find out if Nancy and Bess and George are going to be okay. They’ve been kidnapped!”

Vicki marched over to their father, who was sitting at his desk in the back of the room. “Daddy, tell Sara to set the table.” She glared back at Sara. “Now.”

Their father looked up from the sermon he was preparing. “Sara,” his voice held a mild remonstrance, “do what your sister says.”

***

Did you feel bogged down? Bored? Annoyed? Were you confused about whose point of view the story was in–Sara’s or Vicki’s? Did you just not care enough to keep reading?

Well, all those responses are because it’s not great writing. Great writing sucks you in and doesn’t let you go. It keeps tension (and thus reader interest) high. It is clear, spare, and necessary.

Here’s my attempt to revise the story’s beginning so that you, the reader, want to keep reading.

FORKS AND SPOONS

“Sara!”

Sara looked up from her book. Vicki stood in the doorway of their father’s study, her hands on her hips. “I’ve asked you twice already to set the table! I’m not going to ask you again.”

Sara rolled her eyes. She hated it when Vicki tried to act like Mama.

“Get up and go set the table!”

Sara gave her sister the most pathetic look she could. “Just a few more seconds, Vicki, please. I have to find out if Nancy and Bess and George are going to be okay. They’ve been kidnapped!”

“That’s what you said last time!” Vicki marched over to their father who sat at his desk in the back of the room. “Dad, tell Sara to set the table.” She glared back at Sara. “Now.”

Daddy took his earbuds out and looked up from the sermon he was preparing. “Sara, please go set the table.”

***

The revision is half the length of the original, and it moves faster because it’s not weighed down with back story or exposition. Still, I’d be curious to know what you think. Does the revision hold your interest more than the original? Do you want to keep reading? What (short of a car chase) would make it more compelling?

But as I worked, I was held in the hand of God, my work inspired by the Spirit of God breathing life into the words that sometimes poured generously across the page and sometimes had to be wrenched and wrestled there.

Let me be specific. My book is an introduction to the church year. Each chapter corresponds to one of the eight major seasons or days of the Christian calendar. The two chapters I was most dreading were Epiphany and Pentecost because these are not seasons but rather single days, and I wondered how I would ever find enough to say about them to fill a chapter.

The Epiphany chapter, particularly, gave me fits. I wrote and found nothing usable, so I wrote again with the same result. It took me 12 of my 16 hours to even find a gem I could use to provide direction for the chapter. But once I did, the writing flowed, and in just a few days I was able to finish the whole chapter, piecing in material I’d written—and written off—in those frustrating days of what seemed like wasted writing time.

Months later, when I got my editor’s comments back, guess which chapter he wanted me to significantly revise? Yep, Epiphany. He particularly wanted me to change the opening story and suggested moving one of two anecdotes from within the chapter to its beginning. Again this chapter gave me fits. I went through eight drafts, using various iterations of my editor’s suggestions before one line—one line!—from the chapter morphed into a story, and that story fit the themes of the chapter far better than I could have ever dreamed.

As I look back, I see dozens of instances like this one, where I felt like I was getting nowhere, banging my head against a wall of words, none of which were yielding to let me through to the road I knew was on the other side. But all that head-banging was not wasted, however painful it was at the time.

I think often of Jesus’ words to his disciples after they feed the 5000: “Gather up the fragments, that nothing may be lost” (John 6:12). Indeed, nothing was. Nothing is. Amazing, that.