Reading My Draft Out Loud

So, I printed out my first draft for a round of edits, and then retyped it from scratch. What’s next?

After a few more editing sessions, this week I was ready for a big-picture writing rule: read your draft out loud. I’ve heard this advice in a variety of contexts, and some writers add specifically that you should read your work to another person to get their input.

That’s what I did this week. I convinced my lovely mother to listen while I read her the opening chapters of my draft.

Pick Up the Mic

I quickly realized why this rule is said to work so well. It makes it easy to get real-time feedback from somebody who doesn’t know the story. If my mom cut me off and told me that she was confused about something, I knew I needed to rework that section. Since I wrote it, sometimes it’s difficult to take a step back and look at it with fresh eyes to see what needs fixing. My mom became that voice of reason.

Sometimes I would even interrupt myself, when something didn’t sound quite right or when a paragraph had no relevance to the rest of the story. Or I would notice that I used the same word twice in one sentence. Or that the dialogue sounded cheesy.

Because the first ten pages are the most important when querying, those are the ones I wanted the most feedback on. After reading them aloud to my mom, it was great to have another person who was familiar with the characters and could discuss major edits.

Smoothing the Draft Out

Before I went to my mom, I read the entire draft aloud to myself. And yes, my throat was sore for days. But that also worked pretty well for me. It helped me smooth out my writing at the sentence level, because I could hear things that sounded clunky.

Mic Drop

This rule was another home run for me. Reading to another trusted person is great, as long as you make sure they’re ready to critique and not just trying to flatter you. I would highly recommend it for a work you are serious about sharing with the world.

Need some creative writing activities for kids, students, or yourself this summer? Check out the Writing Rules Mini Project I put together a few weeks back!

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