Storytime!

Remember when you were little and being read to was a matter of course? Even if you weren’t read aloud to at home, your teachers might have, most likely after recess as a way to make the class calm and settle.

And if you weren’t fortunate enough to have that experience, damn. I’m sorry. Truly sorry.

Why is there no storytime for adults? Outside of author readings, I mean. (There totally need to be more author reading.) But I digress.

One of the classic tips for editing is to read your work out loud, whether for yourself or for an audience. I advocate an audience. (Note: an audience of one is still an audience!)

Make your audience someone you trust. If you can’t trust the person you’re reading to with your creativity, then it’s better to have no audience. And trusting someone in that way is so much harder and rarer than it sounds. So be careful. After all, you’re not doing this so much for the feedback as for the perspective it grants.

But for all the risks and worries inherent in reading your story to someone else, the benefits are pretty awesome. You find where your flow falters. You find the clunky sentences, the out-of-character dialogue. If a phrase only makes sense when you read it a certain way, and on your read-through you have to stop and retrace because that’s not how you read it, then that phrase needs rewording. Because you can’t force readers to read your story the way it is in your head.

And reading aloud in a private setting can be practice for your own author readings, which can be hugely intimidating. When I went to World Fantasy in 2012, I signed up to read at a sort of open mic event. I was so nervous I could hardly read the words, I shook so badly. I maybe glanced at the audience twice. Kate can tell you. So, yes: practice is good.

I am lucky enough to have an amazing friend I trust enough to read even first drafts to occasionally. It helps the story grow and become stronger.

And she is also just about the most gratifying person ever to read to. Seriously. Reading her the novel rewrite is helping me get over the mid-draft blues and keep going. (Unrealistic as it is, I’m aiming for two chapters a week, so this is amazing incentive. Currently on 20 out of 30+!)

Storytime: not just for kids.

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