Tips for a Dramatic
Reading
By Nick Pollotta
With the start of the promotion season here, I thought it might be useful to
some folks for me to pass along a few tips for doing a successful dramatic
reading of your work.
Some of this information comes from my years as a professional (got paid)
standup comic, but I have also done a hundred voice overs for TV commercials,
professionally written radio ads, acted in radio plays, and done countless
readings from my novels over the past twenty-two years.
If you want to see a truly masterful reading, catch Harlan Ellison or Marvin
Kaye. These writers give superb dramatic readings. Forceful, clear, and highly
entertaining. Learn from the pros.
Okay, let's start with some basic stagecraft:
(A) Speak clearly. Keep your hands away from your mouth. No cigarettes, no
chewing gum.
(B) No funny accents! (Even professional speakers don't use these because they
rarely work correctly.)
(C) Practice. Do the reading into a tape recorder, and then play it back. It’s
amazing how many mistakes you will hear, slurred words that you could have sworn
were said clearly, a sentence rushed here, another done too slow, etc. So jot
down notes, then write cues in the margin of the material to be read, and then
read it again to see how you're doing.
(D) Rule of thumb: If this is a handheld microphone, keep the microphone an
average distance from your mouth equal to the length of a thumb resting on your
chin. If it is a clip-on mike, then don't worry about it. If there is a
gooseneck microphone at a podium, the rule of thumb applies again. No mike?
Good luck.
(E) Wear glasses if you need them.
(F) Assure privacy. If at all possible, bring a doorstop to hold the door to
the room where you are doing the reading mostly closed, but not completely, so
that you will not be interrupted by outside noises. This also eliminates
disturbances by people loudly opening the door to see what is going on inside.
A $1 doorstop can make or break a reading. No doorstop? A simple note on the
door can often achieve the same result.
(G) Print the material in a big, clear font. Many times the lighting at the
podium is weak, so reprint the material in a fourteen point font or even bigger,
so that you don't have to squint and angle the paper to read it while on stage.
(H) Keep a glass of water handy. Even if you have practiced a lot, you may be
nervous now. (Especially those first few times before an audience.) So have
water close at hand.
I always suck on a honey-flavored cough drop before a reading to coat and soothe
my throat. This way, I can put as much power into the work as I want and will
not blowout my vocal cords and end up whispering for the next few days.
(I) Know the material! Don't just grab a book from the shelf and choose a
random chapter. Study the material. Read it so many times you almost have it
memorized. This enables you to glance up from the work and connect with the
audience by showing them your face. Just a glance is often enough. It gets
boring for them to only see the top of your head.
(J) Don't dress in a distracting manner. This only pulls the attention of the
audience away from the work being read. I once caught a reading by a very
talented, very new, female writer, who walked out on stage in a micro-mini skirt
and six-inch high heels. Watching her up on the elevated stage, every guy in
the audience turned off their ears and spent a pleasant half hour looking at
her-- clearly visible-- lace panties. Dress conservatively and give your
writing a chance to shine through.
(K) Don't be afraid to correct the text. What reads well to the eye, does not
always sound good to the ear. So go over the material and fix the syntax here
and there. Then go ahead and spell a difficult word phone-net-tick-lee so you
will not stumble over it when reading aloud. Remember, you are weaving a dream
here. This is a dramatic reading, not a high school recitation.
(L) Be sure to pause. Always take advantage of the one aspect of your writing
that you have absolutely no control over when it is being read in print-- the
dramatic pause. Timing for pauses is based upon breathing: a comic pause to
heighten a joke is (on average) three seconds. A dramatic pause, six to eight
seconds. Anything longer than that and it looks like you're stalled.
(M) Mark your time. If they give you a ten minute slot, or an hour, be certain
you will not run over and ruin the next person's reading. In radio and TV
scripts, the average time is a minute per page. But this does not always hold
true when reading a short story. So time yourself and know how long each piece will
actually run.
(N) Hecklers. God forbid you have any, but you will be more self-assured if you
know how to deal with them. Never engage them in direct conversation, as that
only encourages the idiots. Use surprise to confuse them. Heckler, "You
suck!" You, "Ah! (three beat pause) Spaghetti." Then go right back to the
reading. Nine times out of ten a non sequitur like this rattles their brains
and they shut up (especially if they're drunk). This has never happened at a
convention or book store signing to me, but better safe than sorry.
(O) Choose your material wisely. A piece of hardcore vampire erotica is going to flop
badly if read at the Baptist ministers' conference. So find something your
audience can identify with, and always remember that kids might be in the room.
If you're going to do erotica, or graphically bloody horror, then have a notice
posted.
(P) Goofs. Everybody makes mistakes, they are an essential part of live
theater. If you flub a word, sneeze, drop a paper or whatever, for God's sake,
don't apologize! Just resume where you stopped and keep going as if nothing had
ever happened. Be cool.
(Q) Encore! Okay, you did well, the next writer has canceled, and the audience
is chanting for more! It never hurts to have a second piece ready just in case.
This makes you appear to be a consummate professional. A short five minute
back-up piece is perfectly fine, just as long as you have one all ready to go.
I always make sure that my back-up piece is funny, but this is a personal
choice.
This pretty much covers the basics. There is a lot more to learn, but that can
only be acquired by actually doing readings. To recap: know the material,
practice, dress appropriately, prepare the text in advance, have water handy,
then hit the stage with confidence and blow' em away!
As always, best of luck.
Nick Pollotta has written over forty novels, several dozen short stories, and
been translated into six languages. His most recent novels include: Zero
City (Gold Eagle Books, 2002), Bureau 13 (Wildside Press 2003),
Skyhammer (Gold Eagle Books, 2004), and That Darn Squid God! (Wildside
Press, 2004). www.NickPollotta.com
