Many years ago, while Diane was at UNC for the evening, I watched The Lost Moment on the 15″ black-and-white portable TV which had been given to us. The movie was released in 1947, and starred Robert Cummings, in an unusual role for him, if you remember him in the Love That Bob reruns. The Lost Moment was about an unscrupulous editor who was trying to get the love letters of a famous poet from the poet’s widow. It was based on “The Aspern Papers”, by Henry James, who’s work I didn’t appreciate then, and still don’t. I do appreciate the movie.

There were several times when it seemed that the story was going to go in a certain direction. But it never did, which was always a surprise. Twists in the story were always unexpected. I watched it again a few years ago, and I was still impressed by how the subtle twists were not given away before they happened — not just plot twists but character and dialogue and narrative twists.

We returned from nearly three years in England in 1998. The in-flight movie, for which there was plenty of time, was Titanic. I didn’t rent earphones, so I couldn’t hear it, but I couldn’t help watch it, since the screen in front of me was only two seats forward. The underwater scenes were terrific, being footage of the actual dive, made for the film. Then the story started.

There were times in the movie, I don’t remember how many, when it seemed that the story was going to go in a certain direction. And it did. The next time came, and the story went as I expected it to. I began, at each of those times, to predict what would happen before it did — conflict, interruption, her father coming, and so on. And I was always right. Everything was predictable. There were no surprises. I tried, not very successfully, to not watch* the rest of it. The only scene that was remotely interesting was when Kate Winslet was having her portrait painted by Leonardo DiCaprio in the hold of the ship. Maybe two minutes out of one hundred ninety five.

Predictability happens to me when I try to plot out a story, and focus too much on what I think ought to happen, what I would like to happen. The story becomes predictable, and I get bored, and eventually I give up. My characters aren’t alive in my head, and so they are not alive on the page. The setting is static, not dynamic as if I were experiencing it, even if only in my imagination. I have pushed, instead of following my muse.

I have to let my characters be what my unconscious (my muse) creates for me from my knowledge of human nature. I have to let them act and speak according to the situation in which they find themselves, and according to their natures. I have to discover the setting by not thinking about what I want, but again, by letting my muse bring it from unconscious associations modified by a bit of dream thinking.

Each scene in a story has its own beginning and ending. I may have an idea about what I want to accomplish, but it’s best for me if I have no idea about how to do it. That way I am always, if only mildly (and sometimes not so mildly) surprised. My favorite surprises concern my characters when they do something totally unexpected — “I didn’t know she could do that!”

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This is not an error, “to not watch” does not have the same connotations as “not to watch.” I deliberately chose the former.

I don’t read just the ‘final’ draft aloud. I also read earlier drafts that way, when I have made serious revisions of a paragraph or a scene. I’m doing it now. This is good, because every read-through makes the text better. But after I read for a while, my voice will rise in pitch, and I read faster, and I am no longer aware of what the words mean, or what they might mean to the reader. I have lost my focus. If reading aloud is going to do me any good, I have know what effect my words will have. 

Even reading for text needs this degree of attention. If I read too fast, I miss too many ‘little’ problems. I have to really see every word, one word at a time, while still moving forward. It’s not easy for me to maintain this intensity of focus, and I can always tell when I’m losing it. Then I have to stop, put it aside for a while, do something different (like paying bills, feed the cats, step outside for movement and air) so that I can come back and read refreshed, almost as if the story were new. If I am able to maintain my focus, what I get is a good clean text that is typographically correct. But this isn’t enough. 

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I need to read the whole draft aloud a second time, and this time for story. That is, does it flow? Can a reader follow the action without getting confused? Is there unnecessary description, or a description out of place?  Sometimes I discover that I’ve repeated myself, several pages apart. 

What does my character experience? For example, when Jenny walks into the room, there may be dramatic paper on the walls, the color of the ceiling might be unusual (mirrored?), the floor may be carpeted or bare, there may be other doors, the light coming in the windows may suggest the time of day, the furniture may be in a typical or an unusual arrangement. I may need to know some of this as the story progresses, but if all this stuff is what I show when Jenny first comes in, it doesn’t work. 

Think of a scene in a movie. That stuff about the room has to be there, and there are, of course, scenes where the setting sets everything up. But in most scenes, the setting is just the background, and the camera is focused on the seven people standing near the middle of the room, talking quietly but intensely. Can you tell what their mood is? Can you understand what they’re saying? Are they moving or standing still? That’s what I should show, but only if Jenny needs to stay and talk to these people. Maybe she discovers that she’s in the wrong place and should leave, and her having been there at the wrong moment affects the development of the story. But if the room is just an excuse to describe something unusual, then I shouldn’t show it at all. It’s just a living room.

A lot of my original text is actually information for me, not for the reader. I need to know what that room looks like, so that my characters can move as if they were really there, and not walk around a sofa one time, then walk through it another. So that, “She slid to the next seat over,” or, “The chair she wanted was in the far corner.” Or something better than that. So I read for story, for flow, for clarity, and frequently it takes more than one pass. But at last it begins to feel good, so that I have to reread only those parts that don’t. When I get chills all through, I know that I can move on.

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The third read-aloud is for performance, as if I were reading it for a discriminating audience of people who like this kind of story. This is not the same as reading for story, though there may be overlaps. This time I pay attention to anything that sounds odd, or feels wrong when spoken, or is unclear as I hear it. If you read this post, you may be able to follow it, but if I read it to you, is there anything that is just a little off? Even just a little can take readers out of the story for an instant, maybe just long enough so that they lose interest. In a movie, the director has to make sure that his or her audience can actually see what they need to see, as if they were watching reality and not some poorly written fiction. And for me, I want my reader to experience my story in that way, and not to be distracted by the text. 

Again, this may take more than one pass. But when I get to a full read-through, which I can enjoy no matter how many times I’ve read it, then I can be fairly sure that many readers will enjoy it as much as I do. And if they do, then I’ve done it right.

And with each reading aloud, I find more typos, missing words, doubled words, wrong words, misspellings, extra spaces …

I don’t remember when I first realized, that what I considered to be a final draft wasn’t really final. I had worked on the novel from sketch, to rough, to first, to second, to final draft, frequently with sub-drafts in between. I came to the point where I could do no more, it was done, I was finished, and it was ready for submission and publication.

Except that it wasn’t. It needed a lot more polish, fine details, little things. I learned this when I was giving a reading at a convention, of a novel which had been published and was available in the dealer’s room and on line. One typo could be forgiven, maybe, but there were more than that on those first few pages, some words weren’t right, and some were out of place.

Most readings at conventions are delivered as quickly as if they were being read silently, and often with little or no inflection. It sounds like the reader just wants to get it over with. I had been almost as bad. That bothered me, until I remembered what I had learned about reading aloud to an audience, when I had been a member of Toastmasters International. Most of our speeches were to be given from memory, but sometimes we read things aloud. 

Part of Toastmasters was getting evaluations from other members. A common comment for readers was to go more slowly. Of course. So I tried doing that for my next read speech, and I was more careful, as if I were recording an audio book. Or as if I were telling the story instead of reading it. I could feel the difference in the audience’s response.

I had tried to read my novel that way while at the convention, which was how I had found the problems. Later, I read the manuscript I had just finished that way, as if to an audience of interested fans, and I found typos, doubled words, missing words, misspelled words, bad phrasing, sentences or even paragraphs out of place, and on and on. And reading it aloud took longer than I had hoped, because it took time to fix all the problems I found. Sometimes I had to fix the same problem more than once. But when I had gone all through it, I was pleased with what I had accomplished. 

I had the experience, many years ago, while typing up a hand-written text, of being able to continue to read, and to type, while responding to something Diane was telling me. I was rather surprised by this. I had slowed down a lot, but I had done it all at the same time: read, write, hear, and speak. Amazing.

Years later I read an article about the verbal part of the brain, which turned out to have four different regions: reading, writing, hearing, and speaking. It vindicated my understanding of what I had done. 

Later I began to think that the writing region was also divided into hand-writing and typing. I couldn’t test it — left hand on keyboard, right hand holding a pen. But other writers have told me that their first drafts are frequently if not always hand-written, and sometimes their corrections are done by hand too, because they are thinking differently by hand than by keyboard. That is my experience as well. 

Reading a text silently uses only the reading region of the verbal part of my brain. Reading aloud also involves the speaking and hearing regions, which lets me become aware of things I would otherwise have missed. 

When I have finished what I used to think of as the ‘final’ draft of a story, it is so familiar that I am reading what I know, not what is actually on the page. I need to back off, and not just so that I can read it as if it were almost the first time. I now polish every ‘finished’ text by reading it aloud. It has helped a lot.

And I have learned how to read aloud three times, each with a different emphasis. I’ll have to get to that next time.