Violin as Pen

I played the violin back when public schools actually dared to teach kids to read music, dance, and play classical instruments. Our poor teacher was trying to explain classical music to a bunch of hyperactive gonzos and she boiled it down to three things: rhythm, harmony, and volume. She told us that's all we needed to play music. Each stanza had a collection of notes that had a rhythm, harmony/dissonance, and a volume level. Although I've grown up and come to appreciate music as a lot more than that simple definition...it's also not. 

Some times when I look at dramatic scenes I see them as stanzas of music. And each scene has a rhythm, harmony, and volume. That's why when you watch a movie like THE GODFATHER II and it begins in a wedding scene (LOUD VOLUME, harmony of matrimonial love, communal rhythm) and then the flow switches to a small private scene (soft volume, dissonance in an argument, personal rhythm of something seedy and hidden happening behind closed doors).  Or you watch THE AVIATOR and it begins in a soft scene of a mother bathing a child in darkness before cutting to a bright noisy airfield with planes taking off. The jump between the scenes is cognitively satisfying to the brain just like how the bombastic cannons of the 1812 Overture needs quiet moments around it. When writing I think a lot of about the LOUD-soft, harmony-dissonance, and breath. I wish more people taught writing like it was music. That's where the poetry is and that's where the emotions are buried. 

I remember writing a monologue in school that made every actor cry when they read. It was just about a man sitting in front of window, having a sunstroke, and breathing. When I rewrote the scene I snipped out two sentences to save time...and everyone stopped crying. I edited the monologue some more and then it became boring. I had unknowingly taken the musicality out of the story.

We might be able to teach writers how to tell stories of catharsis instead of just the crashing noise of a finale.