This Side of the ‘Sweats’ – 6 Tips for a professional Author reading by Donna Carrick
My husband, author Alex Carrick, is an exceptional public speaker. He should be. After decades of addressing countless groups in his capacity as a professional economist, he’s long-since mastered the art of grabbing and holding onto audience attention.
Having said that, Alex still admits to suffering mild bouts of glossophobia prior to every presentation.
It’s no wonder the less-experienced speakers among us encounter this problem. An estimated 75% of all public speakers will suffer from some form of “speech anxiety disorder”. In many cases, the symptoms can be debilitating.
Most writers whom I’ve had the pleasure to call friends are particularly susceptible to this problem. We're at home with our pens, our books, our keyboards – any item that allows us to communicate via the written word. We are experts at email, wizards of the Word document, bosses of the blog, titans of Twitter, gods of Google…. You get the idea.
For many of us, the mere idea of “face-to-face” communication, especially with a large group of strangers, can nearly hobble us. There’s no shame in this statement. It’s who we are.
We are writers.
From time to time, though, we’re going to need to overcome this anxiety. We may have to sit on a panel at a conference, or we may be asked to give an interview.
For the purposes of this article, I’ve chosen to focus on “Author Readings”. For writers, a reading has the potential to be one of the most challenging forms of public presentation. Not only are we forced to **shudder** speak in public, but in doing so we must expose our beloved WORDS to the world. In effect, we will be judged not only on our voices, our hair, our clothes and our general carriage, but also on that which is most precious to us: our Art.
No one can guarantee an “anxiety-free” presentation. The degree and severity of symptoms will depend largely on the speaker’s personality combined with the amount of experience he or she has had.
There are, however, some tips I can share to reduce your overall stress:
1- Be prepared.
Read your material in front of a mirror, your family, your friends, into a microphone, a camcorder. Memorize it. If you lose your place, you will be able to go on. You’ll be far less likely to trip over a difficult word if you’ve repeated it many times.
2- Speak slowly.
(I wanted to be facetious and repeat # 1, because nothing is as important as being prepared, in my opinion. However, notice my tremendous restraint in not belaboring the point. LOL)
Seriously, folks, however slowly you may think you are speaking, chances are that you’re talking too quickly. You already know what you want to say, because you spent time preparing.
Your listeners, however, have not had the benefit of hearing your before. They need time for your words to travel from their ears to their brains. They need to “embrace” your story. They cannot do this if you rattle it off at a breakneck pace.
3- Love your words.
Enunciate. Project. Inflect at the right places. (Don’t overdo it, though!) Subtle use of vocal power can infuse your work with layers of meaning. These are your pages, your books. This is your art. Cherish it, and let your audience know how you feel.
4- Be brief.
Unless you have agreed to speak for a pre-determined period of time, keep in mind the current attention span of most listeners is very short. Even if you must be in front of the group for longer, don’t drag out your reading. Instead, choose a section to read that will inspire discussion, then lead the group to explore your theme or issue with you in greater detail.
An ideal “reading” time should not exceed 15 minutes, and can be as short as 2 minutes. Any less, and your audience may feel cheated. But, unless you are a trained Shakespearian actor, more than 15 minutes runs the risk of driving your listeners to distraction.
5- Be yourself.
Everyone else is taken. If you’re the coolest writer dude on the planet, that’s ok. Go ahead and be cool. But if you’re not, that’s ok, too. People are generally kind. They came to hear you read, to get to know you and your work. They’ll be able to tell if you are less than real, and insincerity will close their ears.
It’s always better to be less than perfect, than to be less than yourself. People will respect you for it. Your confidence will grow with each presentation.
6- Know your audience.
To this I’ll add: Respect your audience. If you are speaking to a group of church ladies on a Sunday afternoon, don’t read from your latest erotic thriller. LOL Your thriller is indeed literary art, and it does have a place. That place, however, is not at Sunday after-church tea.
Likewise, if you find yourself addressing a room full of groovy (is that still a word?) under-25-ers, choose a selection that will hold their interest. They won’t likely tune in to lengthy descriptions of Chantilly lace curtains. They may, however, love your thriller. Especially if it has vampires. Or werewolves. But more on that in another article.
There are no magic fixes to cure “speech anxiety disorder”. I wish there were.
On the other hand, the above tips are ‘tried and true’ remedies. They can have a significant positive effect on your stress levels as well as on the quality of your reading. With a little practice, you may discover you actually enjoy presenting your work in this way.
After all, the written word was originally meant to be heard.
So get out there, friends, and let your work sing!
Donna Carrick is the award-winning author of The First Excellence, Gold And Fishes and The Noon God as well as an anthology of mystery stories titled: Sept-Iles and other places. With her husband Alex she is also co-founder of Carrick Publishing.
The First Excellence, reading by Donna Carrick on YouTube
Having said that, Alex still admits to suffering mild bouts of glossophobia prior to every presentation.It’s no wonder the less-experienced speakers among us encounter this problem. An estimated 75% of all public speakers will suffer from some form of “speech anxiety disorder”. In many cases, the symptoms can be debilitating.
Most writers whom I’ve had the pleasure to call friends are particularly susceptible to this problem. We're at home with our pens, our books, our keyboards – any item that allows us to communicate via the written word. We are experts at email, wizards of the Word document, bosses of the blog, titans of Twitter, gods of Google…. You get the idea.
For many of us, the mere idea of “face-to-face” communication, especially with a large group of strangers, can nearly hobble us. There’s no shame in this statement. It’s who we are.
We are writers.
From time to time, though, we’re going to need to overcome this anxiety. We may have to sit on a panel at a conference, or we may be asked to give an interview.
For the purposes of this article, I’ve chosen to focus on “Author Readings”. For writers, a reading has the potential to be one of the most challenging forms of public presentation. Not only are we forced to **shudder** speak in public, but in doing so we must expose our beloved WORDS to the world. In effect, we will be judged not only on our voices, our hair, our clothes and our general carriage, but also on that which is most precious to us: our Art.
No one can guarantee an “anxiety-free” presentation. The degree and severity of symptoms will depend largely on the speaker’s personality combined with the amount of experience he or she has had.
There are, however, some tips I can share to reduce your overall stress:
1- Be prepared.
Read your material in front of a mirror, your family, your friends, into a microphone, a camcorder. Memorize it. If you lose your place, you will be able to go on. You’ll be far less likely to trip over a difficult word if you’ve repeated it many times.
2- Speak slowly.
(I wanted to be facetious and repeat # 1, because nothing is as important as being prepared, in my opinion. However, notice my tremendous restraint in not belaboring the point. LOL)
Seriously, folks, however slowly you may think you are speaking, chances are that you’re talking too quickly. You already know what you want to say, because you spent time preparing.
Your listeners, however, have not had the benefit of hearing your before. They need time for your words to travel from their ears to their brains. They need to “embrace” your story. They cannot do this if you rattle it off at a breakneck pace.
3- Love your words.
Enunciate. Project. Inflect at the right places. (Don’t overdo it, though!) Subtle use of vocal power can infuse your work with layers of meaning. These are your pages, your books. This is your art. Cherish it, and let your audience know how you feel.
4- Be brief.
Unless you have agreed to speak for a pre-determined period of time, keep in mind the current attention span of most listeners is very short. Even if you must be in front of the group for longer, don’t drag out your reading. Instead, choose a section to read that will inspire discussion, then lead the group to explore your theme or issue with you in greater detail.
An ideal “reading” time should not exceed 15 minutes, and can be as short as 2 minutes. Any less, and your audience may feel cheated. But, unless you are a trained Shakespearian actor, more than 15 minutes runs the risk of driving your listeners to distraction.
5- Be yourself.
Everyone else is taken. If you’re the coolest writer dude on the planet, that’s ok. Go ahead and be cool. But if you’re not, that’s ok, too. People are generally kind. They came to hear you read, to get to know you and your work. They’ll be able to tell if you are less than real, and insincerity will close their ears.
It’s always better to be less than perfect, than to be less than yourself. People will respect you for it. Your confidence will grow with each presentation.
6- Know your audience.
To this I’ll add: Respect your audience. If you are speaking to a group of church ladies on a Sunday afternoon, don’t read from your latest erotic thriller. LOL Your thriller is indeed literary art, and it does have a place. That place, however, is not at Sunday after-church tea.
Likewise, if you find yourself addressing a room full of groovy (is that still a word?) under-25-ers, choose a selection that will hold their interest. They won’t likely tune in to lengthy descriptions of Chantilly lace curtains. They may, however, love your thriller. Especially if it has vampires. Or werewolves. But more on that in another article.
There are no magic fixes to cure “speech anxiety disorder”. I wish there were.
On the other hand, the above tips are ‘tried and true’ remedies. They can have a significant positive effect on your stress levels as well as on the quality of your reading. With a little practice, you may discover you actually enjoy presenting your work in this way.
After all, the written word was originally meant to be heard.
So get out there, friends, and let your work sing!
Donna Carrick is the award-winning author of The First Excellence, Gold And Fishes and The Noon God as well as an anthology of mystery stories titled: Sept-Iles and other places. With her husband Alex she is also co-founder of Carrick Publishing.
The First Excellence, reading by Donna Carrick on YouTube
