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TECH NOTES:
What You See is What You Get
One of the purely technical skills needed to narrate well is what I call
the “read ahead.” This is the ability to send your eyes forward into the upcoming sentence while your mouth remains
behind speaking the words you read a few seconds ago. Some highly experienced readers can go forward 2 full sentences and
keep their pace, flow and interpretation moving just right. This skill, which
develops over time, allows us to narrate well with less and less prep time. In
cases where time has not been given to properly prep a book or we progress in session past the point we’ve pre-read,
it’s what enables us to maintain both quality and speed. So, if it’s so important, how do you get good at it?
Practice, practice, practice. Find time to pick up a book every night
(the same or several different ones) and practice reading aloud while looking further and further ahead with your eyes. When you can maintain about ½ - one full line of text ahead, push it just a bit farther.
(My students have noted the added benefit of cooling down their pace, too.)
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Try different authors beginning with simple and light pop fiction and
advance to more complex mainstream fiction and literary fiction writers, whose average sentence length can be 3 – 5
lines long.
Make sure you have a good, glare-free lighting. Experiment to see whether glasses or contacts work better for you.
Functional words and punctuation (and, or, it, a, the, an apostrophes,
hyphens, colons, commas, etc.) are easy to mix up with small type. So, why struggle if you don’t have to? Enlarge your
text on a copy machine or scanner. You wouldn’t believe the difference
it can make with your accuracy (especially for eyes over 40). You can even use hash marks or other markings in the margins
to divide the page itself into 4 (or more) visual quadrants to help you keep your place using peripheral vision. Whatever works for you. In time, you will find that your ability to change the written word to the spoken
word happens with better fluidity and fewer errors.
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