How Does That Sound?

Few of us are old enough to remember the RCA Victor record labels. Pictured on the label was a lovely little dog sitting up with his ears perked listening to the sound of his master coming through a rather ancient gramophone, wind up type record player. The look on his face was one of ecstasy. The slogan read: His Master’s Voice.

There has always been tremendous power associated with the spoken word. It is in the listening that the power resides. There are numerous examples that come to mind, but today we focus on that which has been written being read aloud and the impact that it can have on the reader cum listener.

One such an unforgettable example, which ended up touching the entire planet with a great degree of profundity, was the reading on the radio of Orson Welles’ work of science fiction called, The War of the Worlds. Such was the power and sheer terror evoked that listeners throughout the world were convinced that Martians had landed and the fate of the Earth was no longer in their hands. Wells began his broadcast with a disclaimer, saying it was a work of fiction, but apparently, at least to that small part, no one was listening.

On a humorous note, one of my favorite Bill Cosby stories is titled, The Chicken Heart That Ate Chicago. In this story the nostalgic appeal of massive radios the size of human beings as the main source of family entertainment is underscored. The mother and father leave their children at home for a night on the town (something you’d never get away with nowadays) and the children, contrary to specific instructions from their parents NOT to, turn on this massive box of a radio and listen to the Friday night horror stories. Replete with sound effects and a totally fantastic, but, for children, ever so believable, narrative, the young Cosby ends up believing that this massive chicken heart is outside his door ready to eat him. Needless to say, after having spread Jell-O (jelly) all over the floor and having turned out the lights so that the monster would slip and fall, the return of his parents to a darkened room and a slippery floor does not bode well for him.

With the advent of television and again of the Internet, rumors of the death of radio abounded, yet radio is still strong and has found its way into cyberspace. Radio theater has largely been replaced by first, silent films, then, talkies as they were called (remember the words of the famous movie producer, Who wants movies that talk, anyway?), and then television dramas, or, as the weaker ones have been affectionately called, soap operas. Of course, these were and continue to be the go.

Yet, for writers, the power of their work being read aloud and listened to in a plethora of venues and environments and for an equally wide variety of reasons, continues unabated.

The task of filling up endless hours while driving vast distances in Canada and Australia with small children in the car was delightfully fulfilled through the use of books on tape, as they once were know, and now audio books on various media from the CD to the MP3 on a variety of platforms, be they in the car, on your iPod, or played back through your home entertainment system. For writers there is always a gap to be filled, a need to be met, and ears to be tickled by the reading of their works aloud for the entertainment or instruction of a ready and willing audience.

And lest we forget, there are those among our readership who can only read with their ears. The service that audio books provides to those who are sight impaired or totally blind cannot be overestimated. For a large percentage of your readership, this will be the only way they can read your books.

As an integral part of preparing yourself for publishing, you need to ask yourself who will read your books aloud to these most precious readers. If you have a golden voice and do not tire of the sound of it, you may consider narrating the work into audio format yourself. On the other hand, those of us who reserve their voice for special occasions would do well to pick a friend,a movie star, or someone with an equally appealing voice to read their work aloud for them.

Even the task of editing what you have written is greatly facilitated by having someone else read your work out loud, slowly, so that those troublesome passages that we tend to skip over in order to reach the sections we are content with become apparent to our ears. The thought immediately jumps to the front of our mind: That just doesn’t sound right! And surprisingly, often the solution of how to rework, reword or reorder the passage instantly springs to mind, all this simply because we are one step removed from the process by hearing instead of letting our eyes run over the words and fill in whatever gaps or awkwardness may exist.

Should you decide to have someone read your work out loud for you, it is essential that you ensure that person is someone you can trust not to trample on your precious creation and destroy any last vestige of confidence you may have engendered from its writing.

The alternative to a live human being to assist you, especially if you are new to writing and still quite unsure of yourself, is the use of the text to speech engine available on many modern word processors. Even the slightly robotic sounding voices employed by such sub programs have the amazing power of bringing clarity to your writing and will be genuinely invaluable.

Your assignment today is twofold. First, take something you have written and either have someone read it aloud for you, slowly, and identify those areas that need correcting and/or editing, or use the cleverly hidden text-to-speech facility in your word processor to bring your story to life and make the appropriate changes.

Secondly, take the time to think about who you would like to read your writing aloud for that important segment of your readership who will only encounter it in audio format.

Since you are the world’s best writers, completely capable and incredibly creative, this will be a powerful weapon in your arsenal towards creating the best works you possibly can. After all, nothing less will do!

The question could be raised, what is worse than a poorly written book? The sounds of silence.