Writing vibrato.

I have been listening to BBC Radio 3 most of today while beavering away with pencil on paper. For our cousins in the colonies, that is our classical music station here in Blighty.

They have just played something sung by Dame Felicity Lott, and what a beautiful voice she had, simply astonishing compared to other singers. What really stands out, what distinguishes her from others, is how little vibrato she uses. Vibrato is the warbling of notes, a pulsing of the voice, and so many singers get it horribly wrong.

This got me thinking of writing, because just about everything gets me thinking about writing in one way or another. Just as some classical tenors and sopranos ruin the music they sing with too much vibrato, there is an increasing trend for fiction writers to pepper their writing with too many descriptive words, not even purple prose, worse than that, because it reads like good writing for a while, and leaves you disappointed. Just as I suspect that many singers use a lot of vibrato to hide the fact that they cannot hit a note and make it pure and beautiful, I suspect that some writers use endless descriptions to hide the fact that they have no story to tell.

I recently gave up on a book that I had been looking forward to reading because it was all writing and no story. The writer had no song to sing, so he filled his pages with practised words and phrases, sentences learned in writing classes, writing vibrato to hide the absence of notes. I think I lasted three chapters.

I started reading something new last night, and even though I was already tired, I had to read another chapter, and then another, because I was thoroughly enjoying the music that flowed from the words. Yes, there is vibrato, but like a song by one of the greats, such as Luciano Pavarotti or Felicity Lott, it is just right.

Perhaps that is what we writers should be trying to do: to sing a song beautifully?

RIP Dame Felicity Lott. 1947 - 2026