Let Authors Read Their Work!
One thing that bums me out is my sense that people don't seem to want to listen to authors reading their work in public as much as they used to. (This is a trend that predates covid.) I don’t entirely get it: audiobooks are more popular than ever, but the equivalent a of a live performance of an audiobook isn’t automatically popular.
Live readings have been a huge part of my life. For over twenty years, I organized a literary event called Writers With Drinks, in which authors from very from many different genres read their work alongside poets and sometimes comedians. I made up absurd whimsical fictional bios for the participants, and it was a weird good time. A lot of my favorite memories involve reading and performing at other people's events, and ever since I started going to readings as a young aspiring author, it was always my dream to stand on a stage and read out something that I had written to an audience.
There's a particular sort of magic in a well-performed reading of someone's own carefully chosen words. The author and the audience join together in creating a space where the narrative lives in the center of the room, and people are literally transported by hearing the author's voice. I've compared it in the past to church: yes, sometimes it can be boring, but it can also be incredibly transcendent, communal and a bit otherworldly.
And literary readings are a crucial part of book culture — they turn the written word into spoken word, a very particular sort of alchemy. I know for sure I leveled up as a writer by reading my work to people and getting a sense of what was working from their reactions. My upcoming adult fantasy novel, which comes out in the summer of 2025, benefited tremendously from the fact that I read aloud from it at various queer events and SFF conventions. The opening chapter is a lot more streamlined than before, because I could tell that it was dragging and losing the audience in parts when I read it out loud. There's really no better diagnostic tool than reading your writing to an audience, big or small.
Writers With Drinks was part of an amazing moment when tons of people were hosting spoken word events in bars — and here in San Francisco, we still have a wealth of incredible spoken word events. There's the Happy Endings series, held in the same bar where I used to do Writers With Drinks. There are a couple of reading series at the Sycamore bar, Babylon Salon and the Racket. There's Literary Speakeasy at Martuni's. And a ton of others.
But I remember a moment, maybe a decade ago, when storytelling events like the Moth seemed to become the preferred thing to do in bars. I heard over and over that people would rather listen to someone telling a true story on stage (without reading off notes) than read fiction, poetry, or essays. I get it: there’s a certain frisson in listening to someone talk in an apparently off-the-cuff manner about something that (supposedly) happened to them. It’s less literary artifice and wordplay, and more confessional. To be clear, I love these events and have taken part in a bunch of them, but it made me sad to realize they were so much more popular than literary readings.
Also, I've noticed a huge shift in bookstore events over the past several years. Not that long ago, when an author went on tour, the main event would be the author reading from their new book, but now most bookstore events seem centered on the author “in conversation” with another author. Which, basically, turns the whole event into a Q&A, instead of a reading followed by questions. I’ve really enjoyed a bunch of these “in conversation” events that I’ve done, either as the author being showcased or as the person asking the questions — but yeah, I miss readings in bookstores.
When I went on tour for the City in the Middle of the Night in 2019, I’m pretty sure I did nothing but readings. By 2022, when I was touring for Dreams Bigger than Heartbreak, I did nothing but conversations.
Listening to a good speaker read some of their own prose tells you things about the text that you will never learn from hearing that same person answer questions about the book. Good prose is immersive and engaging: it draws you in, and tells you a lot about what kind of story you'll be getting. You can get to know the characters, live in their thoughts, get sucked into their problems.
Here's the part where I brace myself for dozens of people to email me saying that they went to too many author readings that were dull, interminable, or actually incomprehensible. And yeah, I feel you.
Author readings are an art form, just like anything else. They can be done well or incredibly badly. Some authors are great at writing, but terrible at speaking. Believe me, I know. A big part of curating a reading series was avoiding those authors who were brilliant on the page but mumbled on the stage.
But I believe that most of us can get good at reading our work out loud, because it really is a skill that can be learned. Even introverts can master it!
In fact, I've been meaning to compile a set of tips for getting better at reading your work to an audience, as someone who worked on this for years. So I'm going to spend the rest of this newsletter sharing that advice.
First and foremost, choose a good passage to read out loud. Maybe even test out a few passages on a friend, to see which one is easy to follow and entertaining to hear out loud. I generally find that an engaging scene works well as a spoken excerpt — particularly a scene that sets up a situation that we can get caught up in so we want to know what happens next. Case in point: the other night at the Racket Reading Series, I heard Grace Loh Prasad read from her new book The Translator’s Daughter — it was a scene where a Taiwanese-American woman has just arrived in Taipei, only to realize she brought an expired passport by mistake. Now she’s in danger of being sent back to the USA and missing a family gathering.
A conversation between two or three people is usually a good thing to read, especially if they’re having an argument or debate that’s easy to follow. And passages that have interesting dialogue work especially well, because the dialogue breaks up the flow of narration and gives you a sense of one character's voice. Conversely, complicated explanations of things, which sound as though you’re reading a technical manual or a history book, risk losing the audience. I’ve also been surprised by how many times an action sequence can become boring when read out loud — if it’s just a series of moves, one guy punching another guy, it just gets monotonous quick. The main thing is, choose a passage that feels emotional and engaging and tells the audience something about your characters.
Secondly, minimize the pre-reading context dump. A lot of authors, before reading a novel excerpt, will give the audience some context. “What you have to know is that George has just given birth to five thousand molluscs, each of which represents a different strand of discourse in Western political philosophy.” Or whatever. I feel like if this goes on for more than a sentence or two, the audience starts to check out. The less you have to explain the context of what you’re about to read, the more fun it’ll be, in general. After years of doing this, I got to the point where I would launch into my readings with zero preamble, trusting the audience to understand the situation from context.
Time yourself. In general, you should practice whatever you’re going to read to an audience, either alone or in front of friends. Get good at reading it, so you stumble less. But also… make sure you’re not going way longer than you think you are, so you don’t go way over your time slot and test your audience's patience. In fact, it's always better to read shorter rather than longer. If they tell you you've got 15 minutes, read for ten. Always leave them wanting more. The audience might enjoy what you're doing, but the longer you go on the more their attention is going to wander.
But don't rush. This is the flip side of the previous piece of advice: the biggest mistake I often see rookie readers making, and one which I used to make myself, is reading way too fast because you're worried about running out of time or losing the audience. Nobody can follow a lightning-fast reading, especially if you're not enunciating every word clearly. In general, slower is always better: let the audience drink in every sentence as you speak it, make sure every word gets the weight it deserves.
In fact, dramatic pauses are everything. Here's my final piece of advice about pacing: pause for dramatic effect. It works! A few seconds, or even a dozen seconds, of silence can captivate the audience more than a hundred dazzling words. In my experience, you almost can't overuse pauses unless you're literally doing a Shatner. Back in 2015, I spoke at a Harvard TEDx conference and they sprung for a session with a speaking coach. I foolishly thought I already knew everything there was to know about public speaking — and I was so wrong. The main thing I learned really was pause more. Whatever you say immediately after a pause is going to land like a ton of bricks. Also, it’s nice to catch your breath!
I guess I haven't yet said that you need to enunciate clearly, so I'm just going to say that here. But also, if you're lucky enough to have a microphone, eat the mic. Get your lips right up against that metal filigree surface, so you're practically kissing it. I can't tell you how many times at Writers With Drinks I had to sneak onto stage and adjust the mic so that it was right in someone's face instead of a few inches away. The microphone is your best friend and you should show it a lot of extremely intimate love. If you think you’re too close to the mic, you’re probably not close enough.
Finally, please don't forget to have fun. I get that doing a reading can be a bit scary and stressful, especially if you're new to it. But it's also a blast to get to share these words that you worked so hard on with with a bunch of friends and strangers. You can tell when someone is having fun reading their own story, and that goes a whole long way toward winning over an audience and helping everyone else have fun.
Earlier, I said most authors can get good at reading their work out loud. So here's where I acknowledge that some authors can't. And there's nothing wrong with that, and you can still have a wonderful writing life without doing live readings — especially now that they seem less popular. If you're somebody who has a hard time with public speaking in general, or if you're someone who gets stage fright, it's okay to just be honest about that and bow out. I love author readings, but you don’t have to.
Music I Love Right Now
I’ve been waiting for years for someone to write an essay about dance music of the early 1980s, especially around 1982. There was this moment when disco was (supposedly) over, and synth-pop and synth-funk hadn’t yet become dominant. You had horn sections mixed with synth fills, slap bass mixed with synth bass, and drum beats that had the pounding urgency of disco but more syncopation. Call it post-disco, or boogie funk: it’s the shit. So I’m very glad Dan Charnas wrote about this for Slate. I’ve thrown together a quick playlist of some of my favorite bangers from around 1982 (plus one ballad) over on YouTube. Please check it out and maybe wiggle a bit.
Anyway, James “D-Train” Williams did more than anybody to make 1982 magical with killer songs like “You’re The One For Me.” D-Train’s voice is buttery but full of throaty urgency: he can do a decent Luther Vandross impression but also exhort you to get up and do something in his own brilliant way. And by coincidence, the other day D-Train released his first new music in ages: a lovely song called “Time Has Come Today” that feels more 1970s than 1980s but showcases his wonderful voice. Check it out!
My Stuff
Speaking of author readings… on Wednesday at 4 PM PT I’m doing a Zoom reading with Uchechukwu Nwaka as part of the Locus Awards weekend. (I’m nominated for Promises Stronger Than Darkness but also for my short story “A Soul in the World.”) You have to get a virtual membership, but I’d love to see you on Wednesday.
On Saturday, I’m going to be at Massy Books in Vancouver, talking to Annalee Newitz about their new book Stories Are Weapons. It may be sold out, but I think some tickets will probably open up.
The newest episode of Our Opinions Are Correct is about dragons — we talk to Moniquill Blackgoose about the Nebula-winning To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, and we also chat about dragons and sex.
The next Trans Nerd Meet Up is on Saturday July 6 at 1 PM — this time we’re at the Biergarten in SF, and it’s all ages!
I’ve got some books you can buy. There’s my young adult Unstoppable trilogy, which has now been nominated for three Lodestar Awards and has now won two Locus Awards. Plus New Mutants Vol. 4 and New Mutants: Lethal Legion. Not to mention my writing advice book Never Say You Can't Survive and my short story collection Even Greater Mistakes!
You can check out all my book review columns in the Washington Post.