  Mystery
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"Reading your own material aloud forces you to listen."
--- Stephen Ambrose
"No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. She will not want new fashions nor regret the loss of expensive diversions or variety of company if she can be amused with an author in her closet."
- Lady Montagu, providing advice on raising her granddaughter, 1752 (from www.readingrockets.org)
You know, I've been told that by some of the writers in the generation above me: You'll be able to write when you've found a voice.
- Kathy Acker
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Sometimes, on my one hour roundtrip ride to work, I listen to books on CD. Lately my schedule has permitted me little time for the pleasure of reading, so I have resorted to having disembodied voices create new worlds and scenarios for me, literally out of (thin) air.
Usually I leave the car, anxious for the ride home and the new chapter that is only open to me once I turn the key in the ignition. Once in awhile I get out of my vehicle and I feel either bored or disgusted with the story. It could be the wrong sort of voice for one of the characters, or perhaps the soaring music was cheesy in spots and drowned out the storyteller's tale. But typically, when I am not "feeling it" it is because the story is threadbare, full of holes, or wholly unbelievable.
This has not happened often, but when it has I am reminded of the power of words. While cheesy music and bad acting is not the fault of a writer, it is initially the author's job to give voice to a script.
In high school a common instruction my English teachers chanted was, "read it aloud! Read it aloud!" Do you remember being forced to stand in front of the class and read something you wrote? It may have been at that point, when you were stumbling over your words, that you noticed spelling errors you'd somehow missed before, or paragraphs that suddenly did not sound quite right. (How did they make sense before?) Then there were lucky passages that rolled off your tongue as you became the character or the scene.
When I write something, I end up rereading it multiple times. I encourage others to edit my work after I feel I have done my best. When I edit any work, mine or another's, I definitely read it aloud. Like my English teachers of the past, I firmly believe that most things worth reading should be easily said and should be understandable when read.
Take the mystery out of a flawless piece of work - edit, of course, and make your script or book or whatever it is you may be writing worth reading aloud. Take time to differentiate your characters while remaining true to the overall storyline and plot. Think about others reading your work aloud - what do you want them to hear, what would you like them to take away from your story? Do you hear it yourself when you read aloud the words you've strung together? If you do, congrats - your work most likely has a strong voice.
Here's to many more future plays, movies and/or books on CD that are well written!
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Mystery: June 04, 2008 Issue [#2430]
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