Our innate drive to communicate has taken the form of various stories and songs in cultures around the world for thousands of years. This verbal transmission has played a truly important role in human history and continues to weave magic and meaning into our lives today.
The therapeutic power of literature was understood by the ancient Egyptians who described it as “the medicine cabinet of the soul”, and today’s organizations are successfully combining this with the practice of reading aloud.
For contemporary writers of all kinds, pausing to reflect on the value of oral tradition and how the spoken word enhances the reading experience introduces a whole new dimension to creative writing.
Imagine how your message or story would be delivered using the spoken word or song. What difference could that make to the way you write your words on the page?
Once you have written your first draft, the next step is to proofread your work. And if you haven’t already, you’ll find that reading your words out loud is markedly different from reading silently to yourself.
As a writer, reading aloud brings a new perspective to how you express your message or story in terms of content and form.
Reading your work out loud will allow you to:
- get a much clearer picture of whether your writing truly captures the essence of what you want to share with your readers
- capture the energy of the words themselves in terms of how they sound and how well they fit their content
- feel the full rhythm of the piece you have written in a way that is impossible to achieve with silent reading.
Private, silent reading is, of course, a relatively recent development. It wasn’t that long ago that reading aloud was a way to create a communal experience within a family or group.
You may also be drawn to sharing your work in this way. Readers seem to have an insatiable appetite to hear authors read their own work, so this can be part of your author platform building activities.
Live events and audio recordings of you reading your work (which you can offer as free downloads from your blog or website) will help your readers feel a connection with you.
So today I invite you to read your work out loud and experience the benefits of doing so.
