When I was a kid, reading aloud meant an adult with a good voice repeated the words of a book to me, sometimes with voices to make it interesting. I did the same for my own. But as a writer, the term reading aloud has a different meaning. It’s how I listen to the mistakes I made in the book I wrote.
I reserve the Read Aloud function of Word for the last round of edits of the books I write. That’s what I did recently for Finding the Source, the eighth in my Isabel Long Mystery Series. I want it to be as clean as I can possible before I submit it to my publisher Bloodhound Books. And that’s where Samantha, one of the voice options available for Read Aloud, helped me out.
Read Aloud offers a variety of voices but I chose her since the book is a first-person narrative by a woman. Plus, hers was the least weird to me. (When I had an earlier version of Word, the narrator was a man I called Frank.)
Here she is reading the novel’s opening words.
Samantha’s voice has zero emotion and some of her pronunciations are a bit odd. But she’s been so useful bringing to my attention missing words, typos, repeated words, and parts of sentences that just don’t cut it. Frankly, Samantha helped me find a lot of them.
I had gone over this novel many times, half-way through, and then when I reached ta-da the end. But as I did with other books, I’ve found it so effective to hear Finding the Source being read by somebody else, and that’s where Samantha helps out. I follow along, reading the words on my computer screen as she says them. I interrupt her to make any changes.
Yes, I tried reading my books aloud myself but Samantha does a much better job.
It is a time-consuming process. Finding the Source is almost 76,000 words, so I spread the task over four days to keep things fresh. Of course, another set of eyes and a fresh mind will likely find more. That’s what real editors are for. But right now, I am pleased with the work Samantha did.
And, yes, I did use Read Aloud for the first three books in my Isabel Long Mystery Series, recently republished by Bloodhound Books: to Chasing the Case, Redneck’s Revenge and Checking the Traps.
ABOUT THE PHOTO ABOVE: This is a scene from the village where I live. Certainly, one of the most unusual ways to fix that problem.