This tip has to do with something I learned from a fellow author and reinforced as I was trying to record an audio book version of one of my novels. It may sound silly, but you can greatly improve your work by reading it aloud or by hearing it read aloud to you.
This can be a tedious exercise, but it is well worth it. I’m going to pass on an anecdote from that fellow author I mentioned earlier. It was a situation that could have been embarrassing at best and disastrous at worst.
She had written a middle school age book. All of the spelling, punctuation and grammar were pristine and she was ready for publishing. On a whim, she put the book through the ‘Speak’ utility that is part of Microsoft Word (I’ll show you how to set that up later).
What she found was, in one spot where she used the phrase, “That’s going to result in a large count”, the word ‘count’ was missing the letter ‘o’. The spelling was correct as was the grammar. The context, however, for a middle school book definitely resulted in a problem. Had she not heard her book, this might have escaped her attention.
In my own situation, I was foolishly thinking that I could record the audio version of my first book. Audio books have a huge market and I wanted to take advantage of it. One thing I learned quickly was that my book was hard to read in spots. There were very long sentences, clumsy word sequences, and other things that, when read aloud, revealed themselves.
When we read, we tend to skip over things that might be incorrect or clumsy, especially if we’ve written it. When you hear it read aloud, however, these things jump out at you like a pimple on the end of your book’s nose.
If you don’t want to go through reading your work to yourself, many word processors have accessibility settings that will read what you’ve written to you. It may seem like a waste of time, but, I promise you, it will help you improve your work.
For those of you that use Microsoft Word, I’m going to walk you through a few simple steps to set this up. This works with later versions of Word. If you have an older version, the setup might be different.
First, click the icon shown at the top of your screen:
Then, click More Commands. When you get the following screen, click the circled dropdown and select All Commands.
Next, Scroll down to the Speak command, select it, and then click Add.
Then click OK.
When you want to use the text-to-speech command, click the icon on the Quick Access Toolbar.
I hope this has helped you think about another way to improve your work. If you have any questions or anything to add please leave a comment.
Reblogged this on Legends of Windemere.
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Thanks for sharing this, Charles.
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You’re welcome.
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I read my books aloud to my mother. It really does help as you have said here, Don.
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Thanks for the validation, Roberta.
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Reblogged this on DSM Publications and commented:
Check out this post from my author blog.
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Reblogged this on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog and commented:
More great editing advice form Don 😀
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Thanks for sharing this, Chris.
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Welcome, Don 😀
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This is something I always tell my students, Don. One of the best ways to improve one’s work is to hear it read it aloud. That’s a way to catch so many little things that might not otherwise be noticeable.
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It was an eye (ear) opener for me.
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Thanks for the great tip Don! I always did this with my papers in university as well, and discovered a lot to be improved. And now that I’m stepping into writing short stories (as preparation for my dream of writing a book), I still do it.
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It really works well to smooth out the writing and catch little mistakes that an author, beta reader, or even an editor, might miss.
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Reblogged this on Anna Dobritt — Author.
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Thanks for sharing this, Anna
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The missing O must have been a shock! Yes, hearing your story is important. Especially if you can have an impartial reader (like a machine) which won’t gloss over mistakes like that.
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It is a great technique. It’s also funny to hear how the computer pronounces some of the Italian names in my books.
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I can imagine. It would probably struggle with many of mine, too.
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I do it all the time. Wasn’t aware of the audio read built into windows (and I work in IT). Guess what I need to do.
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Terrific, Don. I need to do this next time. Thanks. (The machine may save a marriage)
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Glad I could help you (and your marriage) 🙂
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😄
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I so agree with this. That is what we do in my critique group. We read our work out loud to each other. As we read we catch things and the others catch things as they listen. It is the best exercise. The missing o is a funny story!
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Thanks for sharing this.
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