(Here's the beginning of all this)
Tim said in response to this post: The bit I disagreed with was "But it does contribute to the gradual infiltration of bad craft and sloppy writing" cos it implies that a preponderance of inexactly-crafted material affects people's ability to enjoy and recognise well-crafted material, which it doesn't.
Not the intended implication: I'm more concerned with WRITERS being sloppy. If there is a growing prevalence of disregard for the craft, it's our fault.
Don't get me wrong: deliberately breaking the rules is fine with me if the breakage still acknowledges the rules. But deliberately ignoring scansion and prosody is not about breaking the rules. In fact, it's not even about rules!
Tim said: Also, it does tend to presuppose that the craft rules you consider important are *the* craft rules that are worth following by everyone. Scansion and prosody have an objective basis (nearly)…
They completely have an objective basis. If I say "emPHAsis" it sounds wrong to anyone who speaks English vaguely fluently. That's not a rule of writing, it's a habit of hearing. As writers, we can make use of that, or we can forget about it. For me, forgetting about it or ignoring it is… a shame. It's a waste of a tool we could use to make our lyrics reach our audience more effectively. Why would you NOT use it?
As for prosody, it is also a habit of hearing, and it's most useful in storytelling because it IS storytelling. Without the music that informs our words, all social connections would break down: everything we say to one another is some form of story. Words communicate the facts, but prosody communicates our intention for communicating those facts.
All the other things you list - humour, aesthetic beauty and so on - depend heavily on the make-up of the individual, much of that being to do with their society: cultural class, economic class, social status, familial systems, and so on. That would be why it's more tricky to land a joke than it is to get scansion right. Scansion works for EVERYONE. Period.
Yes, all lyrics represent a trade-off between all of these things, but I think writers ought to go for the most potent mixture possible, every single time. Scansion and prosody are so globally powerful that ignoring them means alienating everyone in the audience, every single time.
I can't believe I'm doing this, but look at the first section of that Horrible Histories thing:
I'm Pachacuti, the Incan lord
All other tribes dreaded
My name means he who shakes the earth
Not that I'm big-headed
First line, fine. Scansion is good in the name, as far as I know. (If it's not, then that is now how I pronounce that name in my head, so I've been taught something that is incorrect.)
The prosody at the beginning of the second line makes me think it's the beginning of a new sentence, so I'm waiting to hear something else at the end… and there is nothing. So my brain then takes a second to go: "Oh, I see, that was the end of the first line."
And then my brain has to cope with "dreaDED" which, on first hearing, is confusingly similar to the word 'dead' because the bad scansion forces my brain to hear the last syllable first. So I have to unscramble that, too.
These are not things I can avoid doing. This is how my brain works with language. They take a millisecond, and I don't exactly notice they're happening, but even so, they are jarring where there doesn't need to be any jarring.
Third line, fine. Fourth line: "Not THAT" makes no sense unless you're pointing at something on a deli counter. "Not THAT cheese, the one behind it."
So my brain is now going, "Not… what? Huh?" and then almost immediately I get the awful scansion on "big-headed": bad scansion made to rhyme! Rhyme gives additional emphasis to a word, so not only is it bad scansion, it's been emphasised with a rhyme, and on the end of a musical A section!
The craft is not there to get a laugh: the idea that he is saying he's not big-headed is the thing that's funny, but that joke is having to fight its way through all these other things that are naturally there because of the way we hear language.
On the same tune (with one split note in the last line):
I'm Pachacuti, the Incan lord
that other tribes would dread.
My name means he who shakes the earth.
Won't let it go to my head!
Makes use of scansion and prosody. Same joke. Lands better on a one-syllable word. Took me two minutes. (In fact, I think the joke is better for the different telling of the story: "Not that I'm big-headed" is an aside, whereas "Won't let it go to my head" is a statement, and since it falls on the end of a musical A section, I think a statement is stronger there. But that's my personal choice, and one of those things that depends more on the make-up of the individual audience member. I'm not even going to start on the mixture of tenses...)
Tim said: Lynn Truss goes wrong, IMO, when applying the same premises to language…
Oh, is she "Eats Shoots and Leaves"? Yeah, I can appreciate those rules of language at any given time in history, but language is - and ought to be - a fluid thing. Scansion is also fluid in that way, but much, much less so. And I would say that prosody is not really fluid at all, which is why anyone in the world who doesn't speak a word of your language can still make out if you're generally angry, sad or joyful.
Tim said: The rules that musical theatre considers important aren't as important in the culture at large, and, for me at least, that's perfectly OK.
I'm not talking about musical theatre. I'm talking about anyone who wants to get some kind of meaning across to an audience. The whole point of this for me is that writers should make use of whatever tools they have in order to get their intention across to the audience as easily and strongly as possible. Scansion and prosody are tools, but they are not rules. We can't avoid their existence, so why not make use of them?
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