The Best Editing Advice: Read and Record Your Work Out Loud

By Charlotte Maya

The best editing advice I received when I was writing my memoir seemed horrifying at first. I was taking a workshop with Emily Rapp Black, and she described the most efficient editing technique she knows: first, record yourself reading your entire manuscript; then, listen to yourself read the whole thing.

Kind of makes you want to return to the dreadful drafting stage, doesn’t it?

Here is how it works:

Press Record:

Buckle up. Step one takes a while. The average audiobook, after editing, processing, and mastering, is about ten hours long. If your first draft, like many first drafts (including mine), is overwritten, or you trip over any words as you speak, or editorialize along the way, this process will take longer.

You don’t need special recording equipment; a phone plus earphones with a microphone will do the job. There are several good recording apps available. I spent hours researching options, which was an effective avoidance technique I don’t recommend. I’ll save you some time: for iPhone, try Voice Memos or Voice Recorder; for Android, Google Recorder or Easy Voice Recorder.

Choose a quiet place to record. I procrastinated until all four of my children had graduated from high school and left for college, which backfired when two of them came home in March of 2020 for the #worstspringbreakever. Your local library or schools might have a recording studio available. I have a friend who records her podcast from her closet; this works well. And it will be good practice for your own podcast appearances when you’re promoting your published book.

Now read the words exactly as they appear on the page. This takes some discipline. It’s okay to pause and make notes, but resist the urge to do extensive editing at this stage. (Trust me, the gaping holes in the plot and awkward shifts in tone will still be there when you eventually press play.) While you are recording, you might pause the device to issue colorful commentary on your own writing or leave the tape running. Up to you.

Press Play:

Most people do not like the sound of their own voice on a recording. Get over it. By the time you’ve heard yourself drone on for seventeen hours, not liking your voice will be the least of your problems. Take heart: If you’re writing in a genre other than memoir, chances are good that you will not read for the actual audiobook production of your book. Even if you are writing a memoir, there’s a good chance that you will not narrate your own book. So, you are almost certainly the only one who will ever hear this version.

Now listen. This is the point at which the editing becomes extremely efficient. Listening through in this way separates the writer from her words enough to experience the work as a reader would. It does the work of two or three drafts worth of revisions simultaneously. (For Seven Drafts aficionados, it’s a bit like doing Allison K. Williams’ Story, Character, and Technical drafts all at once.)

Listen all the way through with a pencil in hand. Maybe tissues. A cup of tea. Or something stronger. Up to you.

Use the pause button. Jot notes. Rewind frequently.

On a bad day – most days, actually – you will notice what’s not working. If you can start to hear the gap between what you’ve written and what you meant to say, this is important information, even if you don’t know (yet) exactly how to fix the issue. Like many memoirists, I was writing the book that I wished I could have read at a critical juncture; for me, that was the time following my husband’s suicide. But after fifty pages of my first draft, even I didn’t care what happened to the me who was the protagonist of my memoir. I had work to do.

You will hear the repeated phrases, the problematic point of view, the boring syntax. At times I sat at a desk with my manuscript splayed in front of me, frantically scribbling. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I leashed up the dog and listened while we walked, sometimes stopping to email myself an idea or pick up the dog poop. Some days the dog poop felt prophetic. Or aspirational.

Keep listening.

One day, you’ll laugh aloud at a scene you’d almost forgotten. That wintry afternoon when my widowed friend and I were sitting in the living room, Pinot Noir in hand. The dog had started to hump my leg, and I blurted, “If I’m not having sex, then nobody in this house gets to have sex.” Laughter is a good sign.

So are tears. I cried when I heard my recorded voice break while reading his suicide note, and I pictured my then six- and eight-year-old children, so small that the three of us fit in one chair. I saw the policeman and the priest nod their approval when I told my little ones the truth of their father’s death. This moment, weirdly, will provide hope for the other days, the days when the structure doesn’t make sense, when the characters don’t make sense, when the story makes no sense, because you know you have truths demanding to be told.

On a good day, your writing voice will start to come alive. You will hear the missing structure and picture the scaffolding that belongs in its place. You will imagine your way into natural sounding dialogue. You are getting closer.

Repeat as Necessary:

When you record a subsequent draft, you will be familiar with the process. When you listen again, you’ll hear your story clearly. There will be fewer random scenes. The dialogue will start to sparkle. The suspense will start to hold. Keep reading, keep listening. Because I can’t wait to hear your story.

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Charlotte Maya is the author of Sushi Tuesdays: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Resilience, and she recently recorded the audio version. She has published essays on grief, loss, suicide, and hope in the New York Times (Modern Love and Tiny Love Stories), Hippocampus Magazine, and Writers’ Digest. She has spoken on the topics of children’s grief and resilience for groups such as Ellevate and the National Alliance of Grieving Children. She has a loyal following on her blog, SushiTuesdays.com and was recently featured on CNN, as well as numerous podcasts. Charlotte earned a B.A. in English literature from Rice University and a J.D. from UCLA. She lives in Southern California with her husband and enjoys hiking in the local foothills and downward-dogging with her so-called hunting dog.