Sorry - earlier today I published this with the Comments turned off and to only Paid subscribers. Same post, correct approach (I hope):
Hi George,
Do you read your story drafts aloud? If so, how often do you do that (i.e. every writing session, halfway through the story, once it’s fully drafted, etc.)? Do you have a process or technique (e.g. record and listen back)? And to what extent does your spoken reading affect your revision process?
I ask because, as part of my MFA program, I am reading aloud my work more than ever, and I’m figuring out how to reconcile the spoken with the written. Of course, some things “sound” great written, but maybe don’t sound great read aloud and the “necessary” edit reveals itself. But I also find myself resisting some edits/suggestions just because it literally sounds better.
Thanks very much for any insight.
A.
Thanks for the question. I know many great writers who swear by this, as a way of getting clear of the text – of hearing it anew.
One of the advantages of reading a work-in-progress aloud is that it’s easier to identify word repetitions – suddenly you hear that you’ve used “irreparable” four times in the last three pages, say. It also helps with larger-scale repetitions – reading something silently for the nine-millionth time, we might be inclined not to notice that the point we’re making, we’ve already made. Speaking that section aloud – the labor required to do so, I suppose, as well as the slower pace forced by speaking aloud – might bring the repetition to our attention.
I’ve heard of people who record themselves reading their work, or who will ask a friend (or AI) to read it aloud.
This reading aloud is, of course, a time-honored tradition that began with the first-ever literary reading, around some ancient campfire, with certain tribe members coming in late on purpose and others drifting off to sleep during, and, at the end, some long-winded guy asked a question that isn’t really a question, but just an opinion essay he wants to get off his chest. (But seriously: Chekhov and Tolstoy used to read aloud to groups of their friends and family).
But I honestly don’t do it.
Partly, this is because I don’t love the sound of my own voice. I’ve got this sort of Chicago thing going on that tends to the slurry/pebble-mouthed sometimes, and this makes it a chore to read aloud – it has the effect of mangling whatever music is in the prose – like a bad singer singing the very nice song I’ve just labored over.
Also, as I thought about your question, I realized that, ultimately, I read to be read on the page. So, I want everything to pass that test. I don’t want the annoying sound of my own voice to cause me to change something that’s actually o.k., and I also don’t want (on the rare occasion when I like how I sound) for me to give myself a higher grade than I’ll earn when the prose is just sitting there quietly on the page in black-and-white.
There is a way that I “read aloud” to myself without…hmm, well, without making any sound. I sort of hear the words aloud in my head as I scan the text. It’s almost like hearing some other, better narrator reading, and that narrator is standing in a nearby room. Or it’s like like hearing me, in perfect voice, having been trained as an actor. The prose is being read a little quicker than it would be in real life (it’s not quite scanning but it’s close), and it “sounds” natural and has a little dramatic flair to it, even if it’s a deadpan flair. In this mode, I’m “listening” for the music in the prose and assessing for efficiency and tightness.
In this mode, I can also “do” the accents and voices more accurately than I can when reading aloud– with more acuity and comedy.
When I go to read something aloud for the first time – for a public reading, say – I can’t aurally “do” the voice I’ve assigned the character, and in which I’ve been hearing him or her all those months. I can get close sometimes, but the version in my head is cleaner and more pronounced and funnier than the one that comes out.
Before I read something publicly, I do practice, just to get as close as possible to that imagined voice. Ditto before I record the audiobook. In that process, I sometimes find a way of performing the text that is different from the way I’ve been hearing it as I revised – that’s fair game, I feel, since reading the work aloud is, really, making a new work of art out of it. As the medium changes, the charms of the piece might get adjusted, which is fun.
Sometimes, I’ll discover a voice that isn’t actually indicated by the prose. In “Victory Lap,” for example, the first time I did it in public, I found myself giving that baby deer on pages 5-6 a really high voice, that isn’t indicated at all in the text (but got a lot of laughs, so).
Reading to an audience is a great way to find out what bits you might better have left out. I am definitely informed, in revising, by memories of that “flop sweat” feeling I’ve gotten a few times while reading (and reading, and reading) some extraneous section that, it turns out, didn’t have much charm to convey.
But reading aloud is also a great way to feel when and why the audience is with you – you can feel it in the room, when you’ve got their attention. (This, in my motorcycle sidecar metaphor1, is the feeling of the sidecar being drawn in closely to the rider’s side.)
Doing readings sometimes helps me when I go back to generate new work – it has reminded me of what charms I actually possess. Other times, it hurts me – I get a little fooled by audience response, which tends to be generous, just because of, I guess, public manners.
For example, people seem to laugh more easily at public readings, so a sort of “grade inflation” can happen (a joke that is a “4” gets a “7”-level laugh). So, I want to be sure to account for that inflation the next time I go to write something funny, so I don’t set the bar too low.
But again, and as always, any approach can work. (More and more it seems to me that the only method in writing is the shedding of methods.) And it may be that, next book, I get addicted to reading my prose aloud.
So…how do you approach this question of reading your work aloud, Story Club? Why do you? Why don’t you? Any tricks, cautions, words of advice for our questioner?
“I’d make the case that the whole fictional thrill has to do with this idea of the reader and the writer closely tracking, if you will. Like one of those motorcycle sidecars: when the writer leans left, the reader does too. You don’t want your reader three blocks away, unaware that you are leaning. You want her right there with you, so that even an added comma makes a difference. And I think building that motorcycle has to do with that very odd moment when the writer “imagines” his reader—i.e., imagines where the reader “is” at that precise point in the story. This is more of a feeling thing than an analytical thing, but all that is good about fiction depends on this extrapolation. Which is pretty insane, when you think of it. The writer, in order to proceed, is theoretically trying to predict where his complex skein of language and image has left his reader, who he has likely never met and who is actually thousands of readers. Yikes! Better we should do something easier, like join the circus.” From this interview with Patrick Dacey, for BOMB Magazine, back in 2011.
It's also revealing to ask your actor pal to read your work back to you, assuming everyone has a friend in the theater. Let them alone with it, so they can understand what you've written, and allow them to "do a reading" just for you. I'm lucky to have actors in my life, so I did that once with a piece that was, after working on it in this way, published in an anthology.
When I read that same piece aloud at a bookstore in Brooklyn organized by the publishing company, I used what I learned from my actor friends to bring the reading more humor and timing. My performer friends coached me beforehand, before the reading, and my friend who owns a books on tape company had me practice at a podium with a crowd of supportive people. Generous AF. So make friends with actors! It's amazing what they bring to the work.
I used to do a spoken word program on community radio, and I read those pieces aloud over and over, both for the "music," but also because I was terrified of screwing up on the air. Sometimes I recorded the pieces, but when time came for the show I'd turn off the radio because I didn't like hearing myself. Now I write by reading to myself in my head. I've done it enough I can hear how things are going just fine without making a sound. I find it works especially well toward the end of editing, or rewriting, when things can get pretty subtle. That's when a good ear is useful, at least it feels like it is for me. Others might disagree.