Andrew Norriss
Andrew Norriss: 6. Reading it aloud
At some point near the end, I will always read my piece aloud. To myself. Nothing reveals more clearly which bits simply don’t flow, which phrases clunk, and which bits just… don’t sound right. So I print off a copy, sit down at my desk, and read it to myself - making notes as I go of which bits will need changing, and going back to the computer and tapping them in.
More recently, I’ve started doing the reading out loud to other people. It took a while to screw up the courage but since I write entirely for children now and do school visits to promote my books, trying out ideas on a captive audience seemed logical. And children are gloriously honest. You can sense without a word whether what you have written has caught their imagination or not and it can be a sharp reminder that your first job is to absorb the reader into your story and that if you don’t…
Some people find reading their work to other adults in a writing group can be helpful. I’m sure it can, but it can be dangerous as well. I was recently with a group of writers where a woman read out the opening pages of her latest story and, in the discussion that followed, several people told her that she needed more tension, jeopardy and excitement in her story… I’m not sure she did, but what I do know is that they pretty much killed off her story. It’s worth remembering that even skilled and experienced editors can get it wrong. If it’s my story, I need to tell it my way, and there are definite limits to how far I can change it without losing its life and its heart.
Andrew Norriss
