Have you ever written or read something and it just sounds good or feels right but you don't know why? I do now and then. But from what I've read here, I bet most of you know why it sounds good or works well. I understand rhythm but don't work at it, and alliteration, devices like that. But I thought maybe this thread would be interesting and helpful (to me, if no one else ). What are some words and phrases that sound good and why do they work so well together?
He looked at her straight in the eyes with his inexorable, blue gaze, which contained snow, light, and flame... That's just so Him!
Oooh. This is a great idea. I was searching through my novel, and I found this: “That was only a taste of what I can do.” The words that spilled out of his mouth were sharp, edged like a razor. “You, my friend, are in for a long, long night.” Not the dialogue, really, but the description, for some reason, is really satisfying, I guess? I think I like the poetic structure of the sentence and the metaphor, in particular.
If Paris was human, it would be two enamoured ballet-dancers in flight. They would both be dressed in sparkling white, and they would fly effortlessly and with amazing precision of the movements, calling for adoration, perfectly synchronous. They would slowly follow their bodily impulses in the air looking perfection at any second until they land on their tiptoes together after a full split in the air. If Paris was human, he would be the Kirov Ballet dancing their amazing Viennese Waltz. The dancers are looking into each other’s eyes and spilling some secrets between them. He is wearing a tuxedo and a top-hat, all in black, and she is dressed in this beautiful fairy, white dress with black ribbons and a lace cap, waving a fan like a true lady. Suddenly she is in the air with all that white lace bursting about her, and it feels like for several minutes, she has not been touching the ground. If Paris was human, he would be dancing.
Yeah! And the words are 'taste' words - spilled, mouth, etc. This is what I meant! Thank you. I wish I could be specific regarding my thoughts when I had the idea to post this. One thing's for sure - it will come to me!
It never ceases to amaze me just how beautiful things are in the uncaring, unforgiving vacuum known as space. From the birth of stars, to the fantastic solar clouds of nebulae. It truly makes one wonder how something so dead, can be so full of life. Pondering the mystery in the majestic vastness, gazing upon the galaxies that forge their own way through the black ocean like fish without a care.
You know who I think about is Robert Frost. Just the phrase "The Road Not Taken" and the poem. So good, but mysterious. It's like I want to reach down into that poem and take it apart piece by piece to see how a man could write like that!
"Night fell upon Norfaenor. Mourning would soon follow." Set as the 'Overking' of this country was dying in my cancelled fantasy novel. Cheesy but it makes me smile.
@ThistleMae Thank you. It is a thought an alien MC has while looking out of the bridge on a massive space ship.
A rhythmical example: I can write you a long flowing sentence, one that rambles on for clause after clause, meandering from thought to thought, like a slow ancient river in a smooth glacial valley, a waterway of pure ideas, carving its way from metaphor to simile, from fact to fiction. But it means nothing. A long one and a short one. A caress and a punch. Another tool in the box. [The short one in this example is a fragment (doesn't have to be), which is fine, whatever anyone tells you.]
words half strung on a string of music and spilling like marbles poured from the jar of her lips. No clue where on earth I could use that though
That's really good!... as for where? Well I pictured this guy propped up by a bar stool. Himself propping up the bar. His elbows on a wet beermat, his sorrows at the bottom of his seventeenth scotch. His senses so smashed as to hear the 'performin-fish-on-a-plaque-on-the-wall'— you know the thing; it goes by the brass plate moniker of 'Billie the Bass' —it's siren singing to him a lyric of profound consolation for his ills.
thank you! I have no idea what performing fish on a plaque is though. However, even without knowing that detail, I loved your description - full of atmosphere!
My dad used to have a fish on the wall that sang a silly song. I wish I could remember it! I'll look it up!
That didn't take long! Works well in this thread too! "Don't worry, be happy" & "Take me to the river" - words & phrases that sound good together! Thanks for the reminder.
yeah that's it @Mckk . Two words that don't go well together > whiskey & pain. But it will all be ok.
