Reading Aloud as a Revision Strategy
A sample of how excited the dogs were by my reading aloud my whole novel.
Hurray! I finished revising my zoo mystery. Or rather, I finished this round of revisions. I’m certain more will be needed. But for now, I’m doing a little happy dance.
This is the second novel in less than a year that I’ve revised. Two techniques that I used on my dog novel also worked on my zoo mystery:
I tried one new-to-me technique on my zoo mystery.
Well, not exactly new. It’s a strategy I’ve recommended to my first-year college writing students for years—read their work aloud.
But I’d never considered reading a whole novel aloud. I mean, how long would that take?
I’m a fast silent reader, not speed-reader fast, but fast enough to miss things.
Reading aloud forced me to slow down. It forced me to pay attention to smaller details, like how many times I used the word “shudder.”
At a slower pace, I could more easily see and hear the awkward phrasing, the long and confusing setting descriptions, the hard-to-say last name of a character: Dr. Revoir.
I also discovered that two scenes were in the wrong order. They were back-to-back scenes, from two different characters’ POVs, and occur at almost the same moment in time. If I hadn’t read them aloud, I’m not sure I would have discovered that their order was out of whack.
I edited as I went. I cut sentences. I moved sentences. I resolved the notes that I’d left myself in the margin.
It took me about 10 days. It was time well spent.
Have you tried reading aloud? How does it work for you?