If you didn’t pay much attention to the last two issues of Drunk Writing Advice, NOW is the time to sit up in your chair, and read every damn word of this newsletter.

Because we’re pulling it all together.

The three most important elements of style, that is.

This is the final installment of a 3-part series addressing the style elements that, when used in combination with each other, will make your writing hit harder than tequila on an empty stomach. 🍹

They are:

• Conciseness ✅

• Vivid imagery ✅

• And rhythm (today’s topic)

After we groove into rhythm, we’ll be pulling all three elements together. It’s kind of a big day. 🎉

-Kristin 🍷

P.S. — Share your shit! After you’ve followed this framework, shoot me a link to see it published IRL. I’d love to take a look!

🍻 In today’s issue:

✏️ Sentence School: I’ve got rhythm. I’ve got music. I’ve got my thick red pen, who could ask for anything more?

🥃 The Writer’s Pour: Easy exercises to add rhythm to your writing.

🎙️ Drunk Talk: As promised, here’s how conciseness, vivid imagery, and rhythm all come together. (I’ll even show you some of my shitty first drafts.)

🤖 Robot Pals: Overwhelmed by all the stuff we covered today? Here’s how AI can help you get it done faster — and better..

There’s nothing more amazing than a musical (literary device)

Great writing sounds musical. It has movement, pacing, and flow.

If you’ve ever read something you’d describe as “flat”, chances are, it lacked rhythm.

Writing with rhythm is critical because readers don’t just process words — they hear them in their heads, like someone is reading to them. If your sentences all have the same structure, your writing becomes monotonous and unnatural. 

So even if you’re saying interesting shit, your reader will tune out.

The easiest way to add rhythm to your writing is to mix short and long sentences.

• Short sentences punch points through walls.

• Longer ones add depth and nuance.

• And when you use them together, they create a natural rhythm that mimics how humans actually talk — and think. Our brains glob onto that stuff.

I’d like to claim that writing with rhythm is far more complex than simply varying your sentence length, but truthfully, that one tweak will get you 90% there.

And here are two other tricks that will take you over the top. 👇

Play with repetition

When you repeat a word or phrase, it creates emphasis. But if you repeat it too much,  you’ll sound like a parrot with CTE, so choose your moments carefully.

In a recent issue of Drunk Business Advice, I referenced the movie JAWS early in the story, then later incorporated repetition using the famous JAWS score. I combined the onomatopoeia of the score with bold, two-word statements — almost as a wink directly to the audience. 😉

Then I sandwiched them between the narrative elements.

This is a strong example of how you can use repetition and varied sentence lengths to create a musical piece of writing. 👇

Add alliteration, asshole.

Sorry. I didn’t mean to call you an asshole. I was just being alliterative. 😘

Writing with subtle alliteration won’t make you sound like a drunk Dr. Seuss (although, full disclosure, I’ve been reading a lot of Dr. Seuss to my niece this week, and I’m starting to talk like a goddamn muppet).

You’re not aiming for: “Peter the proactive professional perfected his pitch with precision.” That’s a seizure in sentence form.

Instead, look to use alliteration in things like…

• Headlines: “Stop selling. Start solving.”

• Important details: “He poured plenty of pennies into the project…”

• And lists: “A persistent, positive, polite, pain-in-the-ass.”

When done well, alliteration creates a subtle beat that makes your sentences more satisfying to read — and easier to remember.

And since the most we can ever desire is to stick in the reader’s brain, I’d say this is a pretty snappy solution.

(🔥Hot tip — one of my favorite questions to ask  ChatGPT is “What’s an alliterative way to say _____?”)

Dive into some exercises to put what you’ve just learned about rhythm into practice. 👇️

Here are some examples:

Here’s an example:

Let’s pull this shit together!

I’m going to use this section to wrap up the three style elements we’ve covered over the last three weeks, and show you how I edit for them:

✅ Conciseness 

✅ Vivid imagery 

✅ Rhythm (today)

Independently, these three style elements are pretty damn basic. But when they’re combined, they’re explosive.

And here’s my advice—

Don’t try to do it all at the same time, or your writing will turn to gumbo. (So will your brain.)

Once the structure of your story is in place, and you’re ready to start editing for style, do three editing rounds — one for conciseness, one for vivid imagery, and one for rhythm. In that order.

Here’s why:

☠️ Conciseness kills bloat. Editing for conciseness first forces you to say what you actually mean. You’ll strip away all the irrelevant details and extraneous words.

🥹 Vivid imagery makes it real. Once your sentences are clean, you’ll be free to uncover the sensory details hiding in your story. Those details will play on your reader’s emotions, and draw them in. But if you try to add vivid imagery on top of already bloated sentences, you’ll end up with icing on a shit-cake.

🎵 Rhythm makes it enjoyable — and memorable. Once your writing is concise, with textured moments in place, rhythm will make it flow. When it flows, it hits. When it hits, it sticks. When it sticks, you’ve done your job.

Now, I’ve got a special surprise for you…

I’ve taken the very first section of the very first issue of Drunk Business Advice to show you all three steps of this editing process, in detail. Check it out here!

The editor who won’t talk back

What’s that I hear? You don’t have time to carefully comb through three thorough editing rounds for style alone? —gasp!—

(BTW, I’m super proud of my alliteration in that sentence. Total accident.)

Don’t stress. AI can help out a ton on this task. But you need to approach it the same way you would if you were using your own brain for the edits—

One step at a time.

If you feed the AI a rough draft, and ask it to edit for conciseness, vivid imagery, and rhythm all at once, it will spit out crap.

Instead, follow this process:

Once the AI replies that it’s ready, feed it your first draft. Then copy and paste the result into a word document, and perform your own editing pass. You probably won’t agree with all the edits the AI provides, and if you move onto the next step without checking it, the AI will build on shit you don’t like.

Then move on to vivid imagery.

Remember to give the AI the concise version that you also edited. Then repeat the process of copying and pasting what the AI gives you for vivid imagery, and providing your own edits, before moving on to the final prompt for rhythm.

Again, make sure you then give it the version you’ve reviewed for both conciseness and vivid imagery, so the AI has the best possible version to work with for this final style editing pass.

Depending on how long your draft is, leaning into AI as an editing assistant in this way can save you hours.

And that means more time for cocktails. 🍸 #worthit

I don’t take my place in your inbox for granted.

It’s an honor to be welcomed into your world, and I know I have to work to continue to earn it, week after week. So if you have feedback, or if there’s a topic you want me to cover, just hit reply and tell me!

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