“I think I could pick out the best writers in a strange city room by those who write with their lips moving.” Don Murray
Here’s a simple technique I’m playing with: Reading your words aloud or mouthing them as you are actually writing them down. I first came across this “tool” when I read Edna Ferber’s autobiography, A Peculiar Treasure. According to Edna, “You should hear every sentence you write as if it was being read aloud or spoken.”
Edna was a prolific and genre-jumping writer: She wrote short stories, novels, and several hit plays still widely performed today. One of her best-known works, Showboat, inspired the groundbreaking musical by the same name. But before she became a popular writer and eventually won a Pulitzer Prize for So Big, Edna was a journalist. She started out on a small paper, The Appleton Crescent, as a teenager.
In describing her reporting days, Edna said that she and another reporter shared an unusual writing habit: They would “talk” their stories as they were typing them. (See Writing Aloud).This really caught my attention, because we hear a lot about reading our drafts aloud once they’re finished, but I’d never really thought of reading my words aloud in the moment, as I was writing them.
This approach makes words and sentences flow more naturally and rhythmically. It also instantly highlights awkward phrasings, allowing me to eliminate them by rewriting them right away. I’ve also found that it alerts me to repetitive sentence constructions. The big payoff: Adopting this approach leads to a more polished draft.
I’m going to pay attention to this with the goal of turning it into a habit. If I practice consistently, I believe it will become second nature and sharpen my writing style. Why not try it yourself and see if it works for you? It’s simple, but powerful. Write on!
