It has got to the stage in editing my next novel, Flipside, when I am reading it out loud to myself, what my husband calls my mumbling… I actually I thought I was declaiming majestically!
Joking aside, it is a really useful exercise for several reasons; first of all it distances me from my story which I am so familiar with after working on it for several months. it also brings out any repetitions,or awkward phrasing which aren’t always so obvious when you read something silently to yourself. For some reason when I originally wrote Flipside, my style was a little choppy… perhaps I have matured as a writer, but I have certainly changed as a writer. I tend to overwrite, I seem to always use three words when only one is necessary and again, reading aloud brings this out and I’m able to winnow out the extra, make the text leaner and tighter.
So, off I go, back to my mumbling…
Lois Elsden 