Use of metre in non-poetic fiction

I do it on occasion in my WIP. Though, I don't put the amount of effort one would put for a poetry audience, as complicated/nuanced poetry (specific meters and metrical feet) takes too much effort to decipher for a casual reader, such that it risks slowing them down if they catch wind that something complex is occurring. So for me, it's more balancing the syllable count between sentences (so that they're close or the same in count) and innocuous rhymes/slant rhymes. Which end up promoting ease of readability, especially outloud.

After that, I think comes the rhythm of your sentences as you guide it through use of the different punctuation, different size clauses, and different size sentences.

Anyways, very few modern authors seem to do it. As the other user said, Rothfuss does it, but he's the only one I can think of off the top of my head. Oh. And The Blacktongue Thief author, just from the sample pages, definitely has rhythm more akin to poetry than regular prose. And just to throw this in because I always found this interesting, Aaron Sorkin does the same thing with his dialogue as a screenwriter and is famous for it. Here's a video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SExMi2E4fRI

I think it's actually a bit of a shame how few put that level of effort, as a lot of people want to write Epic Fantasy for example, and they think of large battles, monsters, magic, but seem to forget that the tradition comes from the oral tradition of Epic Poetry where the words and rhythm and phrasing actually matter as much as the story/characters/etc. The language used is important. That's how they were easily passed down and remembered. Beowulf. The Odyssey. Etc. And so, "Epics" of today are generally a shadow of what they once were. (But hey, less competition for me)

In all fairness, language like that takes effort to read and parse. But I find poetic prose wielding more casual elements of poetry to be a good middle ground that people don't often take advantage of.

/r/writing Thread