It’s Septembah. You might pronounce this as “septemburr”, but i was taught when singing to never end a word on an “Urr” syllable. “Ah” or “Uh”.
So you non-upper right hand corner of America types can say “Septembuh”. I’ll stick with “Bah”.
Septembah. Septembuh.
Tomay-to, tomah-toe.
What’s this got to do with writing?
The music of words.
There’s a movie I find offensive. But one really offensive scene the dialog flowed like Music.
Once I was training myself to be a GOOD screenplay writer, that scene really surprised me how the dialog literally READ almost like music.
When I re-read what I type, I sometimes realize I set up musical patterns to speech. The choice of words, combinations of consonant and syllable.
Try watching an Akurasawa movie sometime. In some, there’s the same musical flow to words – even though they’re in Japanese. Harsh, rapid shouting accentuates the overall depressive feel in the beginning of “The Seven Samurai”. The way the syllables slur together as the movie builds to the moment we see the Samurai stop and cut his top knot off and shave his head. Then suddenly silence. Remember to breathe during this, you’re going to pass out.
One scene I wrote a few months back had the same musical flow. Calm reasoning speech against urgent, frantic appeal. And a third party shouting threats.
And the calm speaker begins to count down.
The shouter begins to scream profanity.
I was driven to tears writing this. I tried writing the scene without the profanity, and it just didn’t work.
The pacing of the words, consonants and vowels literally force the scene in a way where you literally cannot imagine it with any other words. And the fact that you know what’s coming drives the suspense and intensity to a point where you can’t breathe.
I ended up shoving the laptop away from me and just weeping when I was done writing this, because it was probably the most powerful scene I’d ever written. I felt like I was in the scene. I felt like I was in the middle of it.
If you don’t feel anything writing it, the readers and the viewers won’t either.
