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 …