Reading your manuscript aloud

[Ray McCarthy]

Kermit

That's a video of me writing!

 

[Tim Murray]

I've always seen this recommended, but shied away because it seemed like such a huge job.

It still feels that way, but I'm slowly moving through it.

Reading aloud is certainly proving valuable at highlighting sections of text that initially looked fine on paper, but I found myself stumbling over.

The trouble is, once I've edited any section, I have to go back and re-read it aloud again - which slows down an already slow process.

Another advantage, often mentioned, is it forces you to pay more attention to character voice and dialogue.

My wife reads my manuscripts back to me out loud. It helps me see and hear them more from a readers point of view.

 

[James118]

I hate the sound of my own voice (although I suspect most people do), so I really don't like to. But I probably should. >_>

 

[Ursa major]

This package allows you to place tags inline in your work to change voices.

That's interesting.

My manuscript already uses different (MS Word) styles for each PoV character's narration, their dialogue and their thoughts -- plus the dialogue of all the important non-PoV characters -- so it would be relatively easy to find where such inline tags could be placed.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I'm finding the whole process pretty exhausting. Need quite a bit of energy and stamina to read the entire manuscript out aloud!

On the plus side, it helps force the issue of thinking on character voices for audio recording, and allow for some practice before doing so.

 

[Eric Zeigler]

I have found that having a computer read aloud really works well for me. I have a learning disability in reading, so to have something that is not me read the story has really helped with grammar, and style errors

 

[Brian G Turner]

And it can be very distracting with the rest of the family listening in!

 

[Brian G Turner]

Lordy - hayfever is not good for the voice. This could be a problem when narrating.

 

[CWScott]

I don't read my manuscript aloud. I have trouble hearing what is wrong with the sentence. As my editor tells me, I write how I speak. And boy, do I speak poorly!

If you still want to read aloud, but find it overwhelming, just focus on the dialogue. Does it sound natural? Although my first drafts can be pretty rough, I never use contractions. I hate typing them. Not sure why. But it makes the text sound robotic. And you will get slammed in your reviews. So I have to go back and add them in later, or my editor will catch them.

 

[Dan Jones]

I find the reading aloud does work. The ear catches things the eye sometimes does not. I tried the Scrivener speech feature - it's not bad, it did help me catch a few errors and typos that I otherwise might have missed, but it's obviously not great for tone.

So, text-to-speech automated reader is fairly good.

Reading it aloud properly is better.

But the best solution (if you can afford it) is to hire Brian Blessed or James Earl Jones to read the whole thing for you.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Come and join us at ForWords in Forres I get to read parts of my story out to a group of people every Tuesday. It really does make a huge difference I pick up flow issues I wouldn't otherwise.

Otherwise I run it through a text to speech program which makes me listen to it.

 

[Ursa major]

But the best solution (if you can afford it) is to hire Brian Blessed

It's worth a shout....

The ear catches things the eye sometimes does not.

I expect that the brain is using different pathways, so when one reads text out loud that one is used to reading silently, there's a good chance that reading aloud won't be using pathways that keep "not noticing" (but, in effect, correcting on the fly) the mistakes in the text on the page/screen**.


** - Which begs the question: is reading off the page sufficiently different to reading off the screen to give at least a hint of the required effect?

 

[JaeDarcy]

I definitely use the read-aloud technique for video scripting at work. I've never considered it for my fiction.
I imagine one of the bigger benefits to this technique (in addition to spotting grammar and typo stuff) would be uncovering dialogue that is flat or stiff or just bad...

Wouldn't text to speech sort of minimize that benefit?

 

[SciFrac]

I read everything out loud, multiple times. IMO, it's essential for writing the smoothest text possible.