Reading Aloud

I had a great morning tea with an inspirational character this week. And yes he is a living, breathing human being, but a character nonetheless. He's someone I've gotten to know over the years, and is a wealth of enthusiasm and creativity. If you want to see (or hear as the case may be) for yourself, click on over to: http://www.jonathandentler.com/

One of the things that we discussed, among hundreds of topics it seemed, was his interest in voicing audio books. As you will quickly hear at his site he has an amazing voice and ability to stir the imagination.

This got me thinking about how I write. I find myself continually speaking aloud a particular passage I just finished. This allows me to hear the words, hear the texture, the flavor as they roll off the tongue. But I realized that I only read small parts aloud, and I wondered at what benefit there would be to read a larger chunk. So yesterday I read the entire first chapter aloud, in one sitting (while the wife was at work and the kids were at school of course). Wow, what a great exercise. There were a few places in my "complete" first chapter that I stumbled over. Those I quickly fixed. But there were other whole passages that really came alive for me. I hope I am not just fixated on my own words, and that they really are something that people will be interested in reading, and hearing, but for me it really helped me see that yes, chapter one is as good as I can make it.

I really must move on now to chapter 2. The editing is nearing completion and almost ready for my crit circle to get their hands on, but maybe this time I'll read it aloud before I post it, and maybe they won't find so many amateur mistakes like they did in chapter 1.