The Thursday! Newsletter 2-15: Creation Aloud
Volume 2, Issue 15
This week's newsletter will be short and perhaps just a tiny bit sweet.
Let me share with you the best piece of writing advice I've ever seen (and apologize in advance if the newsletter this week is slanted toward the way I create). See, when I started writing again, a few years ago, I had a heck of a time making my words play well with each other. Descriptions wandered on like from a drunken tour guide. Dialogue was more stilted than a circus Big Top act. Action scenes were just...scenes. Then I happened on a little piece of advice -- for the life of me I can't remember where -- that changed how I wrote.
Read everything you write out loud.
Doesn't seem like much, does it? Compared to "write every day" or "kill your darlings", that sentence seems positively dull. But it worked miracles on the stuff I wrote. My dialogue worked now because I could hear when a conversation didn't sound natural. My descriptions flowed better because I could hear myself droning on and on about some unimportant detail. My actions scenes zipped along far more quickly because, if I got bored listening to them, I knew everyone else would get bored reading them.
The reason this works is pretty simple. We don't read stories so much as we "hear" them. When you read a page to yourself, you act as though you were hearing the words aloud. A phrase that sounds awkward when you say it out loud will seem awkward to you when you read it, but the awkwardness won't seem quite so apparent to you. Get the words out into the open air and you can hear them more clearly. You'll notice all the stumbles and pauses that your readers will also notice. I'm sure there are good scientific terms behind all of this, but I can't come up with any of it right now. You know how it works, though. If you doubt me, ask someone who speaks in public regularly.
I have a very good friend who has been a member of the Toastmasters for a number of years and earned a number of very high honors in the organization. She knows her way around a speech but she's had a problem similar to mine. Often, she writes lines she's sure are wonderful because they look great on paper except that when she reads them, they don't work at all. A clever phrase in black and white can tumble off the tongue like a kid who slips off the diving board and belly flops into the pool. It's only when she gets her speech off paper and reads it aloud that she can clearly see its strengths and faults. The same will work for your stories or poems.
There's another advantage, which is not terribly apparent but I've noticed it a time or three. The things I write affect me differently when I read them aloud. A poem that might make me smile when I finish writing it can make me feel happier than a mere smile when I hear it. A few of my stories have made me laugh out loud. One or two of them have choked me up. Those feeling are good for me to have. We need art to move us, including art we make ourselves. I encourage people who draw or paint to share their work with other people because, in part, I know it means they'll have to look at it critically and openly themselves. When they do, they might find themselves moved by the art that came from inside their own hearts. Their own work will help them. Their own heart will enrich their lives. It has to work like that, doesn't it? If it works that way for me, and it works that way for other writers, it can work that way for artists and sculptors and dancers and who knows who else?
You don't have to be professional, either. Art doesn't require cash money to brighten a day or impassion a night. It doesn't require an audience. That audience can be just one person. That one person can be just you.
Oh, and me. I'd like to see what you're up to, as well. But you first. Read your stuff to you. Show your stuff to you. Use that experience to make your work even better and more gripping. Then show it off to me. I'd love to see. And read. And hear.
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What I Wrote Last Week
"Cut" is a small and unusual poem.
"I Want to Sleep" is a poem about just what it says!
"Interstellar Smugglers' Blues" is a short story about a couple of beings in more trouble than they expected.
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One Last Thing
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