I’ve blogged about this before, but I feel it needs repeating. Read your stories aloud before you send them off for publication. You’ll catch so much more than reading quietly to yourself. Trust me.
I’ve been over Frozen Fire a few dozen times. My writers’ group has gone through it. Yesterday, I took it out and started reading it aloud to my cats. Guess what I found?
Not just an error here or there, but a whole slew of tiny typos that shouldn’t have been missed. This story has already been combed through. There shouldn’t be any snags at this point. Yet, there they are.
How could that be?
Our minds are wonderous! Have you seen these games on Facebook where you have to read the message upside down or backwards or with every letter of the word different but the ones at the beginning or the end? I bet it’s not all that difficult for the majority of people to read those. Our minds like to make understanding the priority, even if what’s actually written doesn’t make much sense.
When we read aloud, it’s more difficult to trick our minds, because our ears come into play as well. We stumble over difficult thing more. Read that last sentence again aloud.
See what I mean?
There’s also a difference between just reading aloud and reading aloud TO someone. We listen more. We’re more critical. We catch more mistakes.
So, read your stories aloud before you send them off. Even if it’s just to your cats.
#Fiction #writing #wendylkoenig
Wendy L. Koenig 