How to Read Aloud

Andrel mailed me recently. He'd been very impressed with the Jim Dale audiobook of the first Harry Potter volume and was inspired to wonder if I knew of any resources on the art of reading aloud.

I didn't have any web pointers for him; reading aloud is a craft I love, and one I take pride in my skill at, but I've never studied it in any organized way. I've been playing with the idea of trying jot down some of my own thoughts on the subject, though, and Andre catalyzed me to have a go at it. So. My tips for reading to other people:

Read slowly. Pause a lot. Even when we're talking very fast, there's a lot more gaps in our speech than when we're reading text. The temptation is to always to slip into a rapid-fire monotone or a sing-song drone which causes the listener to immediately tune out. Vary your rhythm to avoid lulling your listener to sleep.
Don't be afraid to ham it up. For a lot of people, it can be embarassing to emote heavily, but it makes the text a lot easier for the listener to digest (see rapid-fire monotone discussion above). Role-play not just the characters, but the narrator--is the narrative voice amused? Melancholy? Poetic? Adapt your reading to match and accentuate the tone. You're not just conveying, you're interpreting--reading aloud is a form of translation. Written English and spoken English are different languages, albeit subtly, and if you don't do the work of translating, your listener has to.
If you're reading a work you already know well, try to find your characters' voices in advance. Mouth their lines to yourself a few times and see if you can hear how they sound. If you're reading something cold, start out doing a new character cautiously, then broaden her verbal idiosyncracies as you get to know her.
Chose what to read with reading aloud in mind. Funny is a lot easier to pull off than serious. Broad characters with distinct literary voices are easier and more fun to come up with vocalizations for than more subtle ones. And short is very, very important. If you realize you're in the middle of a story that's too long, you'll be sorely tempted to speed up. And one thing that's reliably worse than an overlong reading is an overlong reading in a desperate rapidfire monotone.

Most of the literature designed to be read aloud is children's literature. Most of my favorite stuff to read aloud--even to adults--is officially children's literature. This is not a coincidence.
Learn to read ahead. English sentences can be twisty little buggers, and you can only place stresses and pauses correctly if you have a rough idea where the sentence is going. If you're having difficulty, you're probably going too fast.

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How to Read Aloud