Getting it out there

I consider myself a confident person. Whilst I’m not overly social, I’m not completely out of place when I need to hold a room. I am not shy of public speaking, although I would prefer to just lose myself in my own thoughts. I’ve always been a dreamy-headed person. Like many authors I probably come across as awkward trying to string a sentence together in the real world when my mind has been plagued with my own imagination for too long.

Over the years I have spent a lot of time building on being able to communicate in other ways outside of the written word. When you are a story teller sometimes just writing it down isn’t enough. Not everyone is a reader. Some prefer to hear how your characters would sound, or would prefer to have you tell them the story. I’m a confident reader. The problem is, I’m not a performer. When I was first asked to read my stories to friends or to family it was daunting. Reading aloud at school was one thing. You were reading someone else’s words. When it’s your own charcters and plots it’s your own innermost thoughts and feelings that are being displayed.

The only way to get past that nervousness was to bite the bullet and get those first words read and get the story started.

The most surprising thing from reading your story fresh to an audience is the reactions you get in realtime. Sometimes there will be lines you didn’t intend on being funny, yet manage to garner a hearty laugh. There may even be lines you thought were hilarious and barely get a snicker.

More often, for me, is the shock on the audience’s face when I read a scene that is brutal. A lot of the time I have desensitised myself to just how nasty a character or a scenario is coming across. It’s not until I see the horror on my audience’s face I realise, whoops, that may have been a bit too much.

Any reaction is better than no reaction. So I say, get out there, give it a try. Let people hear your stories. Even if you’re not the greatest reader in the world. You don’t have to be a seasoned actor. They are your stories and they deserve to be told.