This article is the first in a four-part series designed to help you stage more effective readings. Thank you to author Clare Toohey for sharing her wisdom, originally posted on Women of Mystery.
The idea of authors reading their work is supposed to amount to entertainment for the audience and a good promotional opportunity for the author. However, too often IMO, it’s neither, and most often, it’s because writers assume that familiarity with their own work through having created it is enough to take them most of the way through a reading. Erm, well, I’m not so sure about that . . .
So, here are tips, in case you haven’t done a public reading before and wonder where to start, or hope to stop getting cut off before you’re done, would like to feel more engagement from listeners, or want to have more confidence and fun doing them.
SELECTION
Do NOT pick a selection of complicated choreography. It can be difficult to follow by ear if there’s too much action. I don’t mean action in general, but the kind where it really matters that he feinted clockwise on his heel then to the
left, or that the tiny blue wire was affixed, just behind, but not quite out of sight of the barometric gangliwrench. If you’re going to read lots of action, read action that’s direct and easy to visualize, but I would make sure it has alternating moments of internal reaction to the action as well. People attach to characters first, so I probably ought to care about the guy who’s wrestling an anaconda, or I might want the wrong one to win.
In reaction to my caution above, do NOT pick a selection of extensive description or backstory where there’s no action at all, just exposition. There needs to be some arc and movement through what you’re reading to provide dramatic rhythm. Think about a hook-y beginning, an immersive middle, a breathtaking finish. Yes, even short readings should have that structure, because all of us campfire ghost story fans understand intrinsically how that works, whether it’s a joke being told or half of your Chapter 8.
Do NOT pick a selection where you think you’ll have to spend lots of time just explaining the context of the scene to make it comprehensible. Most often with this latter problem, you may think you need this, but clever listeners really can jump aboard a moving freight train with more agility than authors may assume. We do it all the time. Think of the microseconds it takes us to figure out the premise of a 15-second radio commercial. I don’t need to know these people’s names or backgrounds. There’s a dad with a lazy teen who keeps going overboard on his text messaging. I’m ready for what’s next.
Do NOT feel you have to do an early introductory scene, if it’s not the most easily carved into a dramatically paced selection. Do NOT be over-concerned with spoilers. If you don’t give listeners some good stuff, they’ll never read your book to get spoiled at all.
DO try to pick a scene with one of your leading characters, because they’re likely to be the most richly developed, and it’s part of letting people know who you are as a fiction writer. DO try to pick a scene without crazy detail, but with some specificity that will help it stand out in the crowd. Miscellaneous talking heads on a street or over a table is usually less memorable than a conversation over a flat tire, while buying sixteen yards of duct tape, while hanging upside down from a bar. (But you know that, that’s why there are so many otherwise prosaic conversations over straight-razor shaves in barber chairs.)
DO try to pick a scene that’s easy to explain and inherently dramatic. I was reading a complete story, so it didn’t/shouldn’t need additional set-up, but if you’re reading from the center of a novel, think about setting up your premise for listeners in a single sentence. Hard? Sure, but you’re a writer. “The wounded detective returns to the station, only to learn the prisoner who stabbed her is loose in the building with a police uniform.” So maybe you’d begin, not with her thinking about her life and limping thoughtfully up the gray, granite steps, because it’s an introduction to her, but instead, with the detective’s profane yell at the sergeant in full voice as her blood drips on the floor. You might feel odd about beginning your reading with a yell, but if you’re brave enough to do it, people will remember (and I’d dare say enjoy) your reading, and if you’ve got a thriller, it’s perfect. What listener wouldn’t want to know more?
—Clare Toohey
Click here to read part 2 of this essay.
Clare Toohey is a genre hack and friendly contrarian who wrangles CriminalElement.com and also blogs for WomenofMystery.net. A literary omnivore who wants a taste off your plate, she adores the uncanny as well as New England sports.