If You Do Nothing Else, Read Your Manuscript Aloud!

The last thing I wanted to do was read my novel...again. It's like having a friend who writes bad songs and sends them to you. You don't want to listen, but you have to, so you can compose some kind of response. (Don't ask me how I know.) Pure torture.

Even though the first iteration of this book was published in 2021, I'm obligated to reread it before republishing. Good thing. I barely got through the first chapter before I had to stop and delete extraneous passages.

By "reread", I mean "listen to it". There's no substitute for listening to someone read your novel back to you, even if that someone is an AI voice. You get used to it. I was appalled at the reams of back story that made me (the author) want to stop listening. I would ask, what was I thinking, but I grant myself some leeway, since it was only my third novel. I was still learning.

There are a lot of benefits to hearing your novel (or non-fiction book, for that matter); hearing whatever the hell you thought was good at the time you wrote it. Even though it's been four or five years since I was writing this one, I still remember patting myself on the back for my "detail". Oh, it was detailed, all right. Not interesting detail, though.

There was absolutely no reason to describe the house the family moved into when my main character was young. It didn't add a thing to the story, except introduce the MC to the boy next door who would become her fiance. I could have accomplished that in one sentence.  

Backtracking to the opening line, the story had originally begun with dialogue. I later thought that was bad and lazy, but listening to it with its new opening, I realized the original was better. The question my MC asks her mom serves to ground the story. There's some kind of celebration forthcoming, which has to be more interesting than the MC opening the refrigerator door and marveling at all the containers of food stuffed inside. (Yes, really.) 

Obviously, listening to your story will allow you to catch typos that spellcheck may have missed, although Word's spellcheck is pretty good. What it can't do, naturally, is catch a wrong word (random example: typing "stiff" instead of "still"). I have a habit of doing that, but hearing the story read back, this type of error leaps out.

The primary benefit of this process, however, is listening for flow. Many times I've said to myself, "Well, that sounds funky. I think I need to move some sentences around or add one."  

I've seen the advice too many times to print out one's manuscript. Do these people have pallets of printer ink stored in their garages? Know how expensive it would be to print out an entire manuscript? And how is reading it on paper better than reading it on the screen? You're still reading, not listening. Last I knew, sight and hearing are two different senses. Speaking of the five senses, I would rule out tasting your manuscript, unless you absorb context via your tongue. Touching it could work, if you can communicate with potential readers by the laying on of hands. Smelling? I have heard the saying, "I can smell a hit", but I don't think that's meant to be taken literally. So, listening it is.

I admit, I get irritated by the constant starting and stopping, because I find something wrong with just about everything I've written. This novel in particular is a bitch. Running From Herself's audio sessions went pretty smoothly. That's the difference between a novice writer and a seasoned pro. 🙄 I'm actually not kidding. Grading on a curve, this novel was far better than my first two, but it still reeked of amateur faux pas. I can only listen to it in short bursts, so I'm afraid that getting it shaped up for publication is going to take a long time.  

Luckily, I'm in no rush. It might have been better to have saved the formatting until later, though. Now I'm making changes to both the source document and the formatted template. (Hello?) 

Unless you live alone, I advise listening through ear buds. Hearing my written words is cringey, even the decent ones. I can't imagine what another household member would think.