Tips for Pulling Off a Reading

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

First off, I have an increasingly rare public appearance to announce.  Saturday—tomorrow, actually—I’m going to be on a panel of mystery writers at 2:30 p.m. at the West Regional Library in Cary, North Carolina.  It’s my understanding that we’ll be discussing mystery subgenres, how living in this (Southern US) region has affected our writing, and industry changes and the rise of self-publishing.

In addition, there’s a reading.  :)  Those who have read my blog for a while know that I’m not fond of giving readings. The last one I gave is pictured above…I was at a 2011 event with Avery Aames, pen name for Daryl Wood Gerber  (I was appearing as Riley Adams). And–Daryl is a former actress who has co-starred on such shows as “Murder, She Wrote.”  So…yeah. I didn’t sound so hot compared to Daryl.  At least I’m on a panel, so I won’t be the only one. And, even more fortunately, I’ve recently reacquainted myself with a helpful post on successful readings.  It was a guest post writer Jennifer Nielson wrote for Shrinking Violet Promotions several years ago, entitled “The Rules of Readings.”

One of the (many) reasons readings frustrate me is because it’s challenging for me to pick an appropriate passage to read.  This time I decided to use the teaser info that Penguin had selected to stick in the previous book.  But still—I don’t know, it just seemed like an awkward spot to begin reading.

But Jen Nielson gave two excellent tips in her post. One was to edit the passage. Yes, even though it’s been published:

…prepare for some surgery on the excerpt. Eliminate anything that doesn’t add to your reading, even if it’s an important thread to the overall plot. This includes long descriptions (of anything), and backstory references irrelevant to this excerpt. They’d feel like moving through mud while you’re reading. It also will include dialogue that may make sense within the total context of the story, but that is extraneous within the small passage you’ll be reading.

I think that if I hadn’t gotten permission to do this from another author I’d have convicted myself of heresy for suggesting this.  But doesn’t it make so much sense?  While heavy description and exposition may work in the context of a 275 page novel, it makes so much mess to slog through during a reading. I’ll keep the changes minor, instead of making drastic changes. If I needed to make drastic changes, I’d choose a different passage or a different book.

In the same vein, Nielson recommended some character “surgery”, too. For example, the passage I was considering using was used to introduce the reader to some of the future suspects and give readers a sense of who was populating the book. For a short reading, it seemed confusing to have a bunch of different characters.  She recommends:

Very often the chosen passage has a line or two of dialogue that is vital to the scene, but that is spoken by a character who doesn’t matter in your excerpt. Unless the audience is already familiar with all of your characters, if you can attribute that dialogue to another character just during the reading, it will be less confusing to the audience. Sometimes to accomplish this, you may need to make a slight adjustment to the plot. Go ahead. Unless you’re JK Rowling and the world is paying attention to every syllable you utter, it won’t matter.

I tend to agree with her.  What do you think?

So my response was to find the original Word doc of the book, copy-paste the selection onto a separate document, blow it up nicely so that my 43 year old eyes can read all the words, edit the stew out of it, and then print it out.  I’ll read my handout and put the book it came from on a plate-holder on the table in front of me so that the readers can see the cover.  And I’ll keep it short and sweet, believe me.

Any other tips for readings?  Thoughts on giving readings?  Thoughts on editing passages for better stage appeal?

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