Over
the years, I’ve heard successful authors say that it’s important to read your
manuscripts out loud. My usual (unspoken) response is, “that sounds good, but
I’m not sure the result would be worth the effort.” So I have mostly ignored
their advice. (And my own, which I gave in a March 8, 2021 post.)
But
listening to audio books has shown me that what looks okay on paper doesn’t
necessarily work when read.
· I’m a big
proponent of avoiding dialogue tags when possible, but there are times when
doing so results in an awkward scene. For example, people who are sitting
around a table eating dinner are often drinking coffee or buttering their bread
for no other purpose than to identify the speaker—and it is clear that the
action exists for that sole reason. Or on a telephone conversation where the
POV character can’t see the person on the other side of the phone but the
conversation is long enough that readers get confused if you don’t signal who
is talking every now and then, pauses and throat-clearing get monotonous.
I’ve always felt that the word “said” disappears on
the page if it isn’t overused, so that’s my default. But recently I was
listening to a book by an Irish mystery author, and every “said” jumped into my
ear. It wasn’t well-written to begin with and I’m sure she overdid the “said”s
even for someone reading it on the page, but it especially irritated me to
listen to.
·
Then
I recently listened to the children’s classic Five Little Peppers and How
They Grew by Margaret Sydney, and I kept noticing passages where someone
says “oh dear” every other sentence. Usually it’s Polly, and if it had been
only her I could have put it down as a character trait, although it would still
have been overdone. Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one who said it. To be
fair to Margaret Sydney, there were no audio books in her time. Still, parents
read those books out loud to their children.
If these authors had read their books out loud
before they were published, maybe they would have caught the words and phrases
that were used repeatedly and would have replaced some of them. So yes, authors
should read their manuscripts out loud.
Now
the question is: Will I take my own advice?
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