Before we had writing, there was just the human voice. As people developed alphabets, paper, computers and the means to mass-produce reading materials, we began to focus on reading the printed word silently. However, there are a number of benefits to reading your work aloud.
If you have struggled to find errors in your writing, ranging from poor sentence construction to having all of your characters speak as if they were the same person, you need to try reading your work aloud. When you hear the words, it’s easier to catch mistakes that you might not otherwise detect through silent reading.
Read to Yourself
After you finish a passage or a chapter in your book, it’s time to test it by reading the words aloud. As you hear the words, you’ll quickly detect when a sentence is awkward or when you need a better transition between two paragraphs. What might look good on paper could wind up sounding horribly convoluted or clunky.
When you read your work aloud, you can easily pick up on the tone. For example, is your business book sufficiently formal? Is your adventure novel fast-paced and exciting, or does the prose drag along? If you notice that everyone seems to be talking the same way (possibly sounding just like the author), you have an opportunity to give each character a distinctive voice when you rewrite the material.
As a professional writer, you may be so focused on writing properly that you forget that not everyone speaks perfect English. Your nonfiction prose and the descriptions in your fiction should use proper grammar, but dialog should have some flaws.
People speak in fragments, let their sentences trail off and interrupt one another. They may say “between you and I” while knowing that they should write “between you and me.” Your book’s dialog should reflect the imperfections and often casual nature of ordinary speech. Unless your book takes place at a convention of English professors, remember to keep your characters’ words sounding spontaneous and occasionally imprecise.
Read to Someone Else
When you read your own work to someone, you have the benefit of immediate feedback. Practice looking ahead as you read so you can periodically make eye contact with your listener for all or most of each sentence. You will quickly see when the person is losing interest, which is a sign that something has gone wrong in your prose.
Perhaps a sentence is unclear or the last passage was so convoluted, your listener is still trying to figure out your meaning. When the writing is going well, the emotional expressions on the listener’s face are great feedback to let you know the words are doing their job.
If you find it difficult to evaluate your writing while you read out loud, record yourself speaking it so you can play it back later. If you don’t have an audio recorder, many cellphones come with a memo feature that you can use to make a recording.
Some authors prefer to listen to their works in progress while they are doing something else, such as going for a walk or doing chores. Make sure you have something to write with so you can make notes while listening to your recorded work. And after you do your rewrite, read your work aloud once more!