I did a short reading the other evening. Quite short. And to a very small audience - just two others at a local writers' meet-up which, due to the weather being terrible this time of year, only had a total population of five this month - but still worth mentioning nonetheless.
It was a good experience in general, really: I got generally good reviews, and even the "critical" aspect of it wasn't in particular critical, taking the form of nothing more than "you've set the scene with the voice, which perhaps could be pared back just slightly, but what you've written is really effective". That's a paraphrase, of course - but specifically the words "pared", "back" and "slightly" did occur in association with each other.
And I'll be the first to admit it: the manner in which I tell stories is a little bit off-kilter with normal, familiar every-day vernacular. I don't have any issue with that; while I wouldn't set about writing a story set in the Dark Ages in language specific to the Dark Ages verbatim, I would want the language I were to use to fall within the perceptive bounds of the setting. The mode by which people communicate has as much impact on a story as what is being said, albeit in a different way; I'm certainly not suggesting a story can be told merely on the back of how someone speaks, rather than what they say. But it makes total sense: you wouldn't pick up The Odyssey and expect phrases like "How's it going?" to be all too common. Linguistic elements passively shape the perception the reader has of the world they're reading about. I'm sure I've touched in some way on this before, so I won't bother rerunning that race. But I'm open to that kind of critique; I'd rather know how people find reading it than pretend I don't need to know.
It was the first reading I'd ever done, I have to admit, so it was a good learning experience. I was aware the whole time of the speed at which I was speaking, making sure not to fall into the trap of going too fast which I know a lot of people find themselves doing. I've used Audioboo before to do a non-live reading of a poem-story I wrote (and which I'd like to do something with in the future), and I found myself struggling to speak slowly and breathe regularly due to the pressure of having a "perfect" recording. I didn't have that pressure when I did the live reading, oddly enough; I suppose the reality of the situation is that you can always stop and gather yourself while reading aloud in person, but if all you're leaving is a recording...you don't so much have that "hold on a moment" ability.
Anyway, I left the meet-up feeling really proud - the feedback was altogether very positive. The world in the story was correctly judged to be one of foreboding, and of a lurking danger, and of dread - and that really is a key psychological setting of the story. That I had been able to communicate that in the scene I read - or rather, that it had been espied - was really gratifying, particularly since the motive when writing the scene was not specifically to underscore those feelings at all, but to give a voice to a character to whom reference had been made but of whom no real exploration had been done. I feel really glad that the scene has proven itself well-situated enough for there to be congruence between its greater context and the message the scene itself in isolation communicates.
In an unrelated update, except regarding the shared medium (writing) and the notion of paring something down, I entered a severely shortened version of a story about the sea I'm likely to be perpetually writing the longer version of for that "short short story" competition I mentioned a couple of posts ago. I managed to get something several thousand words in length down to 300 (the absolute limit for any valid entry) and then got rid of one word for a grand total of 299. How much of a story can you tell in 300 words? Not much. Well, no, you can tell the entire story, but you can't tell much of it. In any case I'll wait to see whether I'll even generate attention. I have no idea of the calibre of other entries. I'd like to think mine's up there but it really might not be at all!
So, yes - two things writing related. It's good fun.
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