Revision Hack: Why You Should Read Your Book (Out Loud) Before You Publish

One of an intermittent series of posts around issues I see often in my writing coaching.

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When was the last time you read aloud (other than the latest headlines to your horrified friend/coworker/significant other)? Was it a bedtime story when you were a little kid? Maybe you read aloud to your own kids?

What about your book manuscript? Have you ever read that aloud—to yourself, or to anyone else? (I’m especially looking at everyone who writes for the non-children’s markets!)

If you haven’t, you’re missing out on one of the best revision and writing-improvement hacks out there.

Let’s talk about what reading your work aloud will do for you, whether you read for an audience of one (yourself) or for others.

You’ll notice different things

Let’s go back to those headlines. Have you noticed that hearing someone else read you a headline is different from you silently reading it on your screen (or, you Luddite, the actual newspaper)? Or how the act of reading it out loud causes you to focus on certain words?

Hearing is different from seeing. Our brains process the information differently when we read than when someone is speaking to us. This is the first reason reading your work out loud is so good for the revision process.

You will notice different aspects of your writing—sometimes cringe-worthy ones you can’t believe you’ve missed. If you’ve spent a lot of time writing and rewriting, reading your work out loud to yourself is an absolute must.

What sorts of things will you notice? Typically, anything that has to do with the musicality of language:

• Sentences that are too long
• Sentences that are too short
• Too many sentences that are the same length
• Awkward phrasing
• Repeated words
• Gaps
• Tongue twisters and weird rhymes

Language has music. Your book needs to work on a structural level and it also needs to work on the level of language.

You’ll have to slow down

Reading out loud makes you slow down. Most of us can’t read aloud as quickly as we would read silently, and this is the second reason that reading out loud is so good for improving your writing.

You can’t skip stuff as easily when you read aloud. All those artifacts of your previous revisions? You can hear them, and smooth them out.

Plus, reading out loud lets you experience your words as though someone else had written them. You get necessary distance. You’ll spot stuff that doesn’t make sense, stuff that annoys you…stuff you can leave out.

Not to mention, you’ll spot those “cliffhanger” moments much more easily—the places where paragraphs and chapters naturally break. And that benefits your pacing and reader interest.

You’ll think about your audience

Humans are social creatures, and we’ll do a lot for social pressure and peer approval. The audience is one of my favorite rants (see here and here and here for starters)…for good reason.

We like to do well in front of other people. Whether we’re already in front of them, or we’re planning to be in front of them, we take their responses into account. We think about their feedback both before and after they give it:

• In anticipation: as we think about who’s listening to us, we consider what will appeal to them, and what won’t
• In reaction: as we see what the audience responds to, and how, we are extra-motivated to fix what needs fixing, to get the reaction we want

Try this thought exercise: imagine you are going to give a reading next week from your work in progress. What portion(s) would you want to read? Why? What portion(s) would you never want to read to the public? Why?

Congratulations. If you know of a more surefire way to get you to focus on what’s working in your manuscript and what’s not, let me know. I’m all ears.

Bonus: You’ll prepare yourself for the public

Author readings are a time-honored part of the book publicity and marketing process. Not everyone is ready for this—so far, my professional speaking clients are the only ones who feel they’ve got this part of the writing and publishing process in the bag. But you should be ready. If you practice, you get to:

• Work out any jitters
• Practice your delivery
• Discover what parts of the book work best live

Live events are a performance; you don’t want to mumble, be monotone, or read too fast or too slow. You also want to avoid boring your listeners. The more you practice, the more of an ear you’ll have for what works in the live setting. Try recording yourself as you practice.

Bottom Line: Reading aloud is the best revision shortcut I know

Reading aloud gives you so many benefits, I recommend it for everyone. You get to hear what writing tics you frequently use, field-test what parts of your story are boring (or exciting), check what strange stuff might have gotten through revision…and practice for any live author events, to boot. You’ll notice so much, you’ll wonder why you never noticed these things before. That’s the beauty of reading your work aloud.

Give it a go. Story time is not just for kids.
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Interested in other great coaching tips (specially crafted for you)? Let’s get in touch!

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