During my Masters, one of my professors had us take turns reading everything we wrote aloud to a classmate. It sounds like a lot, but it was effective. Reading what you write aloud to another person makes you notice all kinds of things about your tone, repetition, etc that you would otherwise miss.
You can catch things you don't notice when reading it yourself. I think it's because our brains "fill in the blanks". Listening to the computer is a free and easy way to make a first pass.
On MacOS you can turn on Speak Selection, a setting that lets you press Option-Esc to hear the highlighted text.
You'll find it under Settings, Accessibility, Spoken Content in MacOS Sequoia. Then turn on Speak Selection. Once it's on, highlight some text and press Option+Esc.
Fascinating idea. Have you tried open-mic storytelling?
The Moth[1] have storytelling events in various locations and I recently signed up to do just that. I've also tried to add a voice over for some of my more poetic posts and I already feel re-writing after that alone.
Comments
During my Masters, one of my professors had us take turns reading everything we wrote aloud to a classmate. It sounds like a lot, but it was effective. Reading what you write aloud to another person makes you notice all kinds of things about your tone, repetition, etc that you would otherwise miss.
I also let my computer read it aloud.
You can catch things you don't notice when reading it yourself. I think it's because our brains "fill in the blanks". Listening to the computer is a free and easy way to make a first pass.
On MacOS you can turn on Speak Selection, a setting that lets you press Option-Esc to hear the highlighted text.
You'll find it under Settings, Accessibility, Spoken Content in MacOS Sequoia. Then turn on Speak Selection. Once it's on, highlight some text and press Option+Esc.
Fascinating idea. Have you tried open-mic storytelling?
The Moth[1] have storytelling events in various locations and I recently signed up to do just that. I've also tried to add a voice over for some of my more poetic posts and I already feel re-writing after that alone.
[1] https://themoth.org