The Read-Aloud Test (Module: Making It Sound Like a Person)
okay so. this is one of my favorite lessons because it's basically free. no research, no digging through records, no calling your aunt and hoping she picks up. you just need your own voice and a piece you've already written.
here's the thing. when you write, your brain is doing something slower and more careful than when you talk. that's not bad, but it means writing can quietly turn into something stiff without you noticing. you don't hear it happen. the only way to catch it is to read the thing out loud, actually out loud, not in your head.
why this works
when you read silently, your brain fixes problems for you without telling you. it smooths over the clunky sentence. it fills in the missing word. it's being helpful and that's exactly the problem, because you need to hear the clunky sentence.
out loud, you can't fix it without noticing. you'll stumble on the same spot every time. you'll run out of breath in the middle of a sentence that's too long. you'll hit a phrase and think, i would never actually say that to a person, and that's the moment you know you've slipped into spreadsheet mode.
i've said this before and i'll keep saying it: if it sounds like a spreadsheet, it is one. the read-aloud test is just the tool for finding out.
how to actually do it at home
- print it or pull it up on a screen you can hold. doesn't matter which. what matters is you're not scrolling while you talk, you're looking at the whole page.
- read it to an empty room, or to a person, or to your dog. doesn't matter. the point is your mouth has to form the words. i do this in my car sometimes, which probably looks unhinged to anyone driving next to me at a stoplight, but nobody's ever said anything.
- mark every place you stumble. not with a mental note, with an actual pen mark or a highlight. if you trip over a sentence, that's not you being clumsy, that's the sentence being wrong.
- notice where you'd naturally say it differently out loud. if you catch yourself reading "he was employed as a laborer in the local mill for a period of approximately eleven years" and what you'd actually say to a friend is "he worked at the mill for something like eleven years," write down the second version. always the second version.
- read it a second time after your fixes. you're not looking for perfect. you're looking for whether it sounds like you talking, or like a form.
the one thing this catches that nothing else does
it catches the sentences that are technically correct but say nothing. those are sneaky because they read fine silently. out loud they sound hollow, like you're reading someone else's report.
i think about the porch photo a lot with this one. sandy and i were going through the shoebox and there was this photo of a woman standing on a porch, no name on the back, no date, nothing. i showed it to sandy and she looked at it a long time and said "i think that's my grandmother." then she wasn't sure. we still don't know who that woman is.
but here's what i noticed. when sandy said that sentence out loud, "i think that's my grandmother," it had all this hesitation built right into how she said it. if i'd written that down as "sandy believed the woman pictured was likely her grandmother," it would've been accurate and completely dead. reading it out loud is what would've caught that. the spoken version carries the not-knowing in it. the written version I made up just now doesn't.
that's what you're listening for. not just clunky grammar, but whether the sentence still has the person's actual voice inside it, hesitation and all.
a caution, sort of
don't do this pass and your first-draft pass at the same time. i've watched people try to write and voice-test simultaneously and it seizes them up completely, they can't get a sentence out because they're already performing it. write messy first. read out loud after. two separate jobs.
also, if you're reading someone else's story out loud, like something eden or aidan gave you, be a little careful about changing their words too much just because it doesn't sound like how you'd say it. it's their voice you're preserving, not yours. read it the way they'd say it, not the way you would.
before next time
grab anything you've already written for this class, even a rough four sentences, and read it out loud once before we meet again. just once. mark where you trip.