The Library Is Open: How to Give a Good Reading (Patreon)

The Library Is Open: How to Give a Good Reading

Greetings, Mad Fictioneers! We have arrived at summer in Maine, which means it’s wet and slightly warm but not really warm because fuck you that’s why. I’m sick, it’s raining like the sky personally hates me outside, and I have deadlines my lungs don’t really care about. It’s a mess up in here.

But the show must go on! 

So let’s talk about that for a bit. The show, I mean.

There is a great ravine in a writer’s life. On one side of it lies everything that goes into writing a book—all the craft and planning and thoughtful arranging, the careful prose, the revised and revised and re-revised plot, the editing, the workshopping, the excruciating choices of title, names, hair colors, backstories, even the business end, the agents, the queries, trad vs indie, the market analysis, and more editing.

On the other side is everything that comes after the book is out. And it is a lot. And so much of what makes a book and/or and author is blind luck, good timing, publisher support, cover art, a million things you have no control over. But there are a few things you do control, a few things that do get you noticed, and one of them is being able to give a good reading. 

Authors do readings—it doesn’t matter the genre, the reading is the basic unit of the author event, and the author event is what gets your body into bookstores and conventions and in front of people who might be willing to read at least a paragraph of your work. We all have to do it to some extent, greater or lesser, and most of us walk into it with zero training or guidance, hoping for the best. 

Unfortunately for literally everyone, most readings are rubbish.

It’s no one’s fault. We are writers, not readers! We got into this thing to huddle in our cluttered homes muttering anti-socially into a laptop while a cat repeatedly attempts to lie on our keyboards! That is our happy place! Those of us just starting out, unless we came pre-equipped with a background in performance or public speaking, have sheerly no idea what we’re doing, and those of us who are veterans just want to get to the wine and snacks afterward. For the most part, writers just don’t think too much about this part of it until they’re forced to do it, at which point it’s basically like waking up in hell with no cat on your keyboard at all.

But readings can be powerful. And the writers who can do them have a tremendous advantage. In the early days, when I hadn’t published much, I got invitations to read all over the place because word got around that I gave an entertaining reading. That I put on a bit of a show. (And that was before I started traveling with a singer/songwriter). And everyone, really, wants to be entertained. We go to readings hoping for something above and beyond what we get from reading quietly to ourselves or listening to the audiobook. And if you can get a person into your reading, you are very likely to convince them to read your work. Getting them to show up is most of the battle. So once they do show up, you want to make it worth their while. You want them to remember you.

Writers have a tough time of it—musicians, slam poets, visual artists, almost every other kind of artist, are more punk rock than us. Their shows are cooler. Their venues are more badass. Reading out loud from a book we wrote like two years ago at best in TORTUROUSLY bright lighting with a microphone someone dug out of a school choir room in the 80s while people fidget in creaky chairs or talk loudly in the book stacks while deciding whether or not to purchase a spinach-feta pretzel OR EVEN BETTER in a corporate meeting room in a hotel with SOMEHOW MEANER lighting, no temperature control or windows, and someone opening the door every five minutes looking for someone more famous’s reading and then mumbling sorry, sorry as they beat an embarrassed retreat—not embarassed of their interruption, mind you, but embarassed for you, on account of you having the audicity to exist at this convention while not being the famous writer they were looking for, is no one’s idea of rock n’ roll. (HA HA SPACE OPERA FANS WAS THAT SENTENCE LONG ENOUGH FOR YOU I SPEAK WHEREOF I KNOW WELCOME TO THE FIRST MANY YEARS OF MY WRITING LIFE)

But you can do a lot with this, believe it or not. And sometimes, just sometimes, your readings will be in crowded, smoky, atmospheric bars and that’s a bit better.

I did come to the other side of that writing ravine with a background in performance and theater. I confess that, and admit it freely, and acknowledge that it gave me a huge leg up. I had a certain number of basic skills baked in. There are other authors who have that as well—Mary Robinette Kowal, Brian Slattery, and C.S.E Cooney come instantly to mind. However, rest assured no one is asking you to use puppets, play a zillion instruments, or memorize your complete works like those guys. There are also authors who simply have a pleasant and engaging reading voice, and for most people that is more than enough.

So what I’m going to talk about here is mainly those basic skills, plus a few flashy ones. I’m not even talking about the gimmicks I and others have used over the years to make readings memorable—and I’ve done them all, from dancers to actors to singers to a full band to a girl with a snake to literally ripping my book into pieces in front of people because CONFRONTATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART. One time we did most of the above in a sports bar because that’s the venue in that particular city who would take us. And that kids, is what can happen to you if your publisher fails right before your book comes out. You do confrontational perfromance art in a sports bar while most people are just watching the game trying to sell your weird science fiction book out of the back of a truck. 

ANYWAY. I’m not even talking about all that. I’m just talking about how to get up in front of people and read in a way that will make them want to buy your book and come to another reading. No pressure. No girls with snakes. Unless you want them. They are cool. 

Sports bars are not cool.

1. Choose Wisely

This is the most basic thing. You only have one shot at a lot of the people who are gonna show up to your reading. You will never see most of them again. So you have to pick a passage in your book that slaps, as the kids say. Something with good dialogue or a powerful moment. Something that sells the rest of the book. (There is always a chapter that sells the book. Sometimes I don’t find out which bit it is until I’ve tried a couple of different ones, but it’s always in there. With Deathless it was the house elves scene. With Fairyland it was the part where September meets Ell. There’s something in there that shines and promises what the rest of the novel can deliver.)

But most importantly, you have to choose something that feels like a complete experience start to finish. It leaves people wanting more, sure, but it gives them the sense that they went on a journey with you and ended up somewhere. Just reading a random chapter in the middle because it has a really good bit with a graveyard keeper isn’t great unless it stands on its own. Anything that requires a lot of context to understand is right out, because nothing kills a reading like stumbling around trying to explain what the entire book is about and who these seven centuars are and what they’re doing in a graveyard this time of night for ten minutes before you even start.

Often, but not always, this will be the first chapter or two. It requires no context, because the reader going in will have no context for the first chapter. I almost always read the first two chapters of Space Opera because they stand alone as a nice unit without getting into the complexities of the rest of the book. If it’s not the first chapter, it will likely be something in the first half of the book. Anything later leads into spoilers. There’s passage I would LOVE to read aloud to an audience, but I never can, because it would ruin the book for anyone who hasn’t already read it. I also usually try to find something with a bit of humor in it, because a little laughter from the audience is welcome feedback when you’re up there alone and sweating. (And SFF audience are by and large very kind and easy rooms, they want to laugh, they want to support you, no one goes to science fiction and fantasy events to be cool and aloof. After Palimpsest, I swore I’d never write anything without jokes ever again, because standing in front of people talking about sex and longings of the soul and deep shit IN SPORTS BARS was too fucking much without a little giggle to let us all off the hook.)

Obviously, with a short story, you will likely be able to get through the whole thing in a half hour reading, which is the most common length you’ll be asked to give. So pick something that fits your time slot (no trying to cram a novelette into 20 minutes) and shows off your skills. Don’t choose anything you’re embarrassed to say in public. Consider strongly whether you want to say that sex scene to people who can actually look you in the eyeballs when you talk about someone entering someone else IT IS HARROWING. All the same, pick something that excites you, that’s fresh, that you feel is your best work. There is a limited time in which you can read old work and have it come off as dynamic and passionate unless you have solid theatrical training, the kind where you can do the same show twice a night for three years and still knock it out of the park. For the rest of us, our voices will betray us. I was asked to read from The Orphan’s Tales last year, a book I wrote 17 years ago, and I did it, because I am a good sport and they paid me, but I hated every moment of it. All I could see was how I would write it better now, where it was flawed, and all I could feel was how many goddamned times I had read those exact words before. 

Pick something you can’t wait to share with people. And if you do a lot of readings, and start to get bored, read something else.

2. OMG LET’S DO BASIC THEATER CROSSFIT

Ok! Here we go! Basic stuff! None of this is gonna be groundbreaking but it’s all necessary shit. It’s like how you kind of have to know how to spell before you can write fiction. This is the basic white bitch of performance skills, but without her, we wouldn’t get to enjoy our comfortable leggings, would we?

And the funny thing is? If you do this stuff? You will be head and shoulders above most people giving readings. It is simply not a skillset that comes automatically with being a writer of fiction. Or non-fiction. This boiled, unsalted meat and two veg will get you 80% of the way there. Honestly, this essay is pure selfishness. I want to go to good readings. So I help.

Stand up straight. If they give you an option to sit, don’t take it. You will be better, louder, and more dynamic standing. (I mean, I sit these days. But I am old and jaded and lazy. And more importantly I know how to use my diaphragm from a seated position.) Speak and breathe from the aforementioned diaphragm, not from your throat or your chest. Don’t go too fast. You are almost always going too fast. It’s very hard to go too slow. Your audience can only take in information so quickly. Going slower will also help with our old friend enunciation. SAY YOUR WORDS CLEARLY AND CORRECTLY. No mumblers! And if you said a funny part, stop long enough to let them laugh (unless no laugh is forthcoming, then move on quickly ha ha no one noticed). If you said an emotions part, pause to let them DROWN IN YOUR GENIUS before plowing on.

Project to the back of the room. Sometimes you will have a mic. Sometimes you won’t. If you don’t, you can’t just quit. So you have to be able to get loud if you need to. I once did a school visit in a gymnasium of 300 kids with no mic. It was either get loud or turn tail in front of a bunch of 5th graders. That diaphragm thing helps with this. If you get loud by straining your throat, you will not be doing any more readings for awhile. If you do it by supporting your voice with strong breath from your gut, you can go all night, baby.

Look up at the audience sometimes. Once per paragraph, look up. Vary it by looking right, center, left, and then left, center, right each time you take this break to engage. Make eye contact with someone in the audience each time. IT’S NOT WEIRD PRETEND YOU’RE AN EXTROVERT. Now, this is hard, because you have to take your eyes off the page to do it. If you’ve practiced, you can just lift your eyes and come right back to where you were. Do it at the end of a line of dialogue, or the end of a paragraph, or at any point where the place you left off jumps easily off the page. 

Like I said, none of this stuff is revolutionary. Practice it with someone else’s writing until you can do it easily, that way you don’t have to deal with this technical stuff and OMG THIS STORY IS MY WHOLE SOUL PLEASE LOVE IT OR I HAVE NO WORTH feelings at the same time.

3. I mean, I don’t know, I’m not your mother, but look nice

I’m not saying you have to come in cosplay as one of your characters (although you can and people do—it’s a delicate thing. It can come off super awkward. I tend to, if I’m in the mood to dress the eff up, cosplay as my subgenre rather than specifically my characters. Something from the period I’m writing about or reminiscient of a scene rather than HELLO I NEED THIS TO BE A SUCCESS LOOK AT HOW MUCH I HAVE EMOTIONALLY INVESTED IN IT outfits. I wore a flapper dress and a bob wig for the Radiance tour, but I didn’t go AS Severin, because yikes) but you should make a bit of an effort. Everyone will be looking at you (OH GOD) and it’s your chance to make an impression. I mean, Neil Gaiman doesn’t just wear all those leather jackets to look cool. It’s part of his brand, part of the man he wants to seem like. Dress as the person you want to seem like.

It doesn’t HAVE to mean GLAMOUR. Dress in a way that makes you feel awesome. That makes you feel powerful and in control. If that means black jeans and a black t-shirt, well, okay then. Just make sure they’re clean, your actual size, and unwrinkled. Make your hair nice. Smell like you would want your hero to smell when you meet them. Because you’re gonna be somebody’s hero and no one likes smelly heroes. 

Wear makeup if you want—or not, if you’re not into makeup. You do not have to. HOWEVER. Remember how we were talking about the FUCKING UNFORGIVABLE LIGHTING in most reading venues? It is A HUGE DICK. No one looks good in blinding overhead lighting. Literally no one. So, for guys and girls, a little concealer under the eyes and on the tip of the nose, a touch of subtle foundation on the face, nice eyebrows, some lip moisturizer (tinted or not) and the barest touch of eyeliner along the waterline (that means the skin just behind/below your eyelashes, top and bottom) can make you look like you have occasionally slept and not recently fed on the flesh of the living in these hellrooms. Or go full glam, it’s fun. 

If you’re dressed in a way that makes you feel like the Queen of the Fairies or the King of the World, you will stand that much straighter, and believe in yourself that much more. Clothes are magic like that. Don’t leave magic unused. 

This is, in the end, absolutely a performance. What you’re wearing is a costume, whether you know it or not. Know it. 

4. HASHTAG CHOICES

So. I’m pretty good at this. The reading thing. That’s why I’m telling you all these things. That’s why I teach this as a workshop sometimes. Because I can do this real good. I was in theater from the time I could toddle.

But I am not a professional actress. Most likely, neither are you. I love taking my partner with me to readings because he is a professional actor, and he can do all the voices.

I cannot do all the voices. Most likely, neither can you.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO. In fact, unless you are completely, one hundred percent, UTTERLY DUKE NUKEM-LEVEL confident in your ability to do a given voice, you probably shouldn’t. Nothing makes people cringe more than someone dressed as Robin Hood affecting a British accent that would make the Queen literally kill herself at an American convention. (Full disclosure: I did an accent exactly once, because I believed the character needed it, I practiced for weeks, and on the night I did it literally my entire family was in the audience and also some actual British people and I did okay but I will never do it again jfc).

But you can and should differentiate between character voices, and give emotional moments a bit of the old dramatic flair. Differentiating voices is as easy as pitching your voice slightly up or down, roughening or softening it, changing your volume or intensity. Just make choices and stick to them. You wrote it; you know what they sound like. If you wrote that the spurned knight sneered, well, give us a bit of sneer, for god’s sake. It doesn’t have to be over the top, a dash of subtle arrogance for an arrogant character, a little shakiness in your voice for a fearful one. Letting your voice tremble can, all on its own, be incredible effective. It puts the audience right there with your character, and makes you, Big Confident Author, seem vulnerable. And hey, if you feel tears coming on, go with it. I have gotten choked up at MANY readings, because I am a SOFTIE and a GIANT SQUISHY EMOTION PANDA, and no one has ever gotten mad. They usually cry with me. You wrote the feelings. So just feel a teensy bit of the feelings your wrote out loud. You don’t really need anything more than that.

5. Don’t Faff About

I see this happen all the time. Especially with people just giving their first readings or who are particularly nervous for whatever reason. THAT SAID YO I HAVE DONE IT. I HAVE DONE IT ON THE RECENT. We all kind of default into it when we’re not feeling like our best selves for whatever reason.

Get up there, thank everyone for coming, introduce yourself if you haven’t had anyone else introduce you at the event (some people do just wander in), tell us what book you’re reading from (or what story), take a short pause, and start reading. ONE line of context is allowed if absolutely necessary but if you followed #1 it really shouldn’t be. You can say I’m going to be reading from my new novel Red Leather, Yellow Leather, a BDSM paranormal spy thriller set in the pseudo-Restoration society of the bird people of Alpha Centauri but you don’t need to tell us the whole set-up of the scene. It should speak for itself. 

Do not. Under any circumstances. And I mean it. Apologize for your work. Don’t say this is your first reading, or that you’re not good at readings, or make any self-deprecating jokes about the quality of your writing or the state of your soul. Don’t even say I hope you like it or anything like that. Let your reading be your reading. Don’t set yourself up to be judged negatively by telling us subtly or grossly that it won’t be any good. That’s 3rd grade book report shittery AND NOW YOU ARE GROWN AND POWERFUL. YOU ARE THE BOOK THE REPORT IS ON.

On the other end, don’t end with welp or that’s it or—unless it would be SUPER funny—aaaaand scene. Just fold your hands over your pages or close the book and the audience will know it’s over. You can take questions if it’s that kind of gig, but if it isn’t, just take your seat and roll with the rest of the event, whether that’s other readers or the hustle between readings at a con. Let them clap, bask a little, then tell them where to find the book in the world and you online and you’re done.

This stuff WILL become second nature if you do it enough. And doing it, being able to do it, can be a huge advantage. I remember how excited my Fairyland publishers were when they realized they could put me in front of any audience and I would make people cry and feel good about their life choices. Cartoon dollar signs in their eyes, for serious. And it meant that when the conversation about which authors to highlight at which events happened at the office, when the decisions about who to send on a book tour got made, I was chosen more often than not, and therefore my book was promoted more often than not, because I could be relied upon to put on a show and sell myself effectively. You want to be this person for them. You want to be the person readers want to come out to see, so that they will also stay home and read your books.

Yes, it is introvert hell. But it is a skill that will never stop paying off. With time, you will stop being nervous (mostly. I’m still terrified before reading from new work for the first time), you will know all the right places to stop and start to get a good response (audiences are audiences people are people, barring some outlier bits that won’t land, what works with one usually works with others), and you’ll even know how to answer questions like where do you get your ideas with self-effacing charm. (Hint: just pick a distant city, gets a laugh every time.)

Go forth. Write. Read. And be a little rock n’ roll.