Prose in Public

It is inherently awkward to stand in front of a group of people and ask them to listen to you.  This action, just thinking about this action, causes my heart to race and my palms to sweat lightly. And yet multiple times a month I approach a microphone to read a story out loud.

I read to expose my work to a wider audience, to learn in a very immediate way when my stories aren’t working, to feel a shot of adrenaline that many people would pay good money for. And though I have read many times in the past, in the present my nervousness remains.  My racing heart is a reminder that a public reading is always risky.  I approach the microphone and I risk stammering, risk losing my place on the page, risk boring the audience.  And I have done all three. 

I read about twice a month and run a monthly reading series in Chicago, which is a mix between an open mic and a curated show.  I spend a great deal of time watching other writers read their stories.  Sometimes the stories are glorious, capturing the audience and carrying them along until the moment the author finishes.  The applause is loud and immediate, as though the audience had been waiting to applaud the entire time.  Sometimes the stories are inglorious or, even worse, boring.  And I’ve come to realize that, for public readings, the difference between the glorious and the inglorious lies as much in the presentation as it does in the content.  

Sometimes I notice an audience member rustling through her purse, another coughing, a third scooting back in his chair.  These signs are subtle, but they are indications that a reading is not going well.  If the story is funny I can tell how well the story is being received based on the laughter, but if the story is dramatic there are no such guideposts. In those cases, I judge how well a reading is going solely on the stillness of the audience. Enthralled people do not feel itches in the backs of their throats or the desire to search through their purses.  They only want to know what happens next.

Creating the desire in the audience to know what happens next is the key to live storytelling. A spoken story has many of the same requirements as a play, most of all that something must always be happening.  A clear narrative arc must be present in any story that I read: conflict, rising action, climax, conclusion.  The carefully crafted description of my main character’s living room may captivate someone curled up at home on her sofa, but it will not do so for the same person sitting in an uncomfortable wooden chair in the back of a coffee shop. 

A person reading a book will give the author 20 to 30 pages in which to pull her in to the narrative – a stranger at a public reading will give the author 20 to 30 seconds.  I wrote an essay about a reoccurring dream and childhood insomnia, and the print version begins with the dream itself:

“It is bright and the table is cold.  I do not know why I am on the table - which events preceded the table and which events will follow the table. In my mind there is only: a table, a light, a bag, the women, my father and the door.” 

When I decided to read the piece out loud I also decided that it would be difficult for an audience to find their bearings in the middle of a dream. I re-worked the piece, moving the sections about the dream to the middle and instead starting the piece with a section about childhood insomnia. The spoken version begins:

“When I was 10 years old I decided that I wasn’t going to sleep at night anymore.  I had my reasons: 1) it’s boring, 2) I had books to read, and 3) I watched a lot of TV and movies and had the kind of suspension of disbelief that never ended, so I knew that nighttime was when all of the bad things happened.”  

This beginning gives the listening audience a concrete launching point for the story by introducing both my age and the central conflict while also clearly establishing my persona for the piece.

My natural tendency when standing in front of an audience is to slouch, speak softly, look only at my pages, mumble, and rush through the words in a desperate attempt reach both the end of the piece and the point in time when I may once again rejoin the anonymity of the audience.  But I do not do these things.  Instead, I keep my shoulders relaxed, my back straight. I place my mouth as close to the microphone as possible to eliminate feedback.  I carry my pages in a binder or place them on a music stand so the audience can’t see the pages tremble in my hands. I force myself to speak clearly and slowly.  I practice the reading ahead of time and mark places in my text to look up at the audience.  Eye contact is not required, but forehead contact is. I gaze at the foreheads of the audience members and in doing so make them feel as though I’m looking them in the eye. If I do stammer, mispronounce a word, or lose my place I recover as quickly as possible and move ahead with the reading.  A poorly written sentence may, when spoken with conviction, still effectively communicate. Yet, when spoken to the floor by a shaky-throated author, even the best written sentence will not.  

I also keep it short. Time compresses for a person who is reading out loud and five minutes will pass by in thirty seconds.  For the audience member, however, the opposite is true.  It takes two to three minutes to read a single 8-1/2” x 11”, double-spaced page in twelve point font out loud.  You may read this and think, “No, that’s not right, it can’t possibly take that long.” But it does. And while my twelve page story may be perfectly plotted and paced, after twenty-four minutes the audience isn’t going to care how perfect it is: they’re just going to want it to end.  The ideal length of time for a spoken story is five to eight minutes.  I want to sit down with the audience wanting more, not less. 

I know that when I approach a microphone the audience wants me to do well. When I am an audience member, I experience the intense feeling of wanting the reader to do well for the very selfish reason that, if he doesn’t, I will feel uncomfortable on his behalf.  What all audience members want is to be able to relax and listen to the reading, confident that the writer is in control.  

I read my stories out loud because I want the exquisite experience of earning the audience’s interest.  I want to look up from my pages and see enraptured faces.  They want to know what happens next.