I did something different this week. Above is a seven-minute podcast of part of chapter five. Give it a listen and excuse the southern accent.
My friend Robert is a writer, actor and journalist. He is the kind of friend every unpublished writer should have and I am lucky and blessed we are in each other’s lives.
He is a bit of a technophobe, however. He readily emails (no one can survive now without email) but prefers to write old friends with a pen and a yellow legal pad. He still mails letters at the post office and maintains a PO Box.
He works downtown and still wants his expense checks on paper so he can walk them down to the bank and deposit them.
Robert is an expert in Western movies. Honestly, you can watch practically any oater with him - the older the better - and he can tell you who wrote, who directed, composed the music and the behind the scenes shenanigans. He is so good that he has a book on Ride the High Country coming out next year from the University of New Mexico Press.
His writing advice might be the best there is, though. He cleverly slices and dices my paragraphs, questions dialogue and suggests moving sections that I try with trepidation before realizing that the story is much better for it.
His top somewhat old-fashioned suggestion is to read your work out loud. With.a short story the idea is to read it aloud once it is finished. Then make inevitable revisions.
Now 16,000-plus words into Journey, American, his advice to me was to read chapters aloud.
I read the three newest chapters (four, five and six) over the weekend. Errors in phrasing jump out.
Does the dialogue sing and flow or does it drop like rocks?
His question for me is does chapter six (entitled Scotch, Rocks) read like a novel or a play? He feels it reads like a play (of course, he is currently starring in a sold out Edward Albee play that wraps today.)
That is a subject for another day.
Leave a comment. I respond to every one and want to know what you think.
Wise advice to read your work out loud. Now I don't think I'm weird for that reason! LOL
Greetings Jeff, your friend Robert's advice on reading everything aloud is spot on. I will add to that, print your work and read through a print copy. Inevitably mistakes show up better in pages printed than on the computer. The computer is great for editing and proofing with Spellcheck, but a printed page read aloud it that best way to edit. Never ever rely on Spellcheck alone, or Grammarly.
Someone I know had a "professional" editor proof their book and that editor used Grammarly and and told the person their book was ready to self publish on Amazon. After printing, people reading the book, including myself, started finding errors. I freelance so I offered to re-proof and edit the book. I spent about 10 days proofing and editing the book for this person, for a fraction of what they paid the "professional" editor.