(written 5\/89; webbed 10\/12\/95; heavily revised 12\/22\/96; lightly revised 5\/9\/2006)<\/p>\r\n\r\n
For over ten years now, various friends and I have been getting together on occasion to read stories aloud to each other. This activity\u2014graced with the unlovely but utilitarian name \u201cstory reading\u201d\u2014can be a great deal of fun, but can also be rife with pitfalls of various sorts. This guide is an attempt to help others to run story readings. Note that reading stories is different from\u2014and, generally, much easier than\u2014telling<\/em> stories; while people do occasionally tell stories at these gatherings (and it usually goes over well), that\u2019s not the primary emphasis.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Historical note: the origins of our approach to story readings are lost in the mists of antiquity. The idea may have sprung fully-fledged from a conversation I had with DH about a Delany essay called \u201cOn Pure Storytelling\u201d; or it may\u2019ve been derived from MK\u2019s reading The Princess Bride<\/cite> aloud, which in turn may\u2019ve been inspired by folks at Yale who were doing much the same thing. Whatever the history, it\u2019s clear that other groups\u2014notably one in Boston\u2014have been having similar sorts of readings for at least as long as we have.<\/p>\r\n\r\n No two story readings are quite the same, and my opinions about how they should be run are sometimes very different from others\u2019 ideas. This guide is therefore intended primarily for those who haven\u2019t done story readings but would like to. So don\u2019t take the following as gospel; they\u2019re just my opinions, to be used as a rough set of guidelines if you like \u2019em. I\u2019ve used examples from actual readings, but every example without a name attached has occurred on multiple occasions. I wrote original (rather different) version of this guide in 1989, for an APA I\u2019m in; to avoid boring or confusing those of you who don\u2019t know the people that version referred to, I\u2019ve replaced their names with initials.<\/p>\r\n\r\n One person picks any story and reads it out loud. Repeat until all listeners leave.<\/p>\r\n\r\n A little advance planning is necessary if you want more than a couple of people to show up to your reading.<\/p>\r\n\r\n The first step is to decide where the reading will be held. I\u2019ll assume you\u2019re having it at your place of residence; if you don\u2019t have enough room, or if you live far away from everyone you\u2019re inviting, you can hold it elsewhere, but you\u2019ll probably have less control over setup and invitation list if you try to run a reading at someone else\u2019s place.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Next, pick a time and date for the reading. You may have a hard time scheduling a time when everyone can make it; try to give at least a week\u2019s advance notice. Weekday evenings are all right, but people who work full-time are usually tired and usually have to leave relatively early on such nights. Weekend daytimes people often want to be out and about. Also, people often tend to hit an energy slump mid-afternoon, which can mean all the attendees falling asleep. Sunday evenings face the prospect of work in the morning; Friday evenings come at the end of a long work-week. Thus, I find the time that works the best for my readings is Saturday evening, which also gives the host all day Saturday to clean and prepare. Readings can be a nice quiet alternative to an evening out on the town. (On the other hand, plenty of people would rather be out at parties on a Saturday night, so of course you should schedule to match the needs of your attendees.)<\/p>\r\n\r\n Once you\u2019ve chosen a date and time, contact a dozen or so friends and invite them over for an evening of stories. I find the ideal size for a reading to be between 12 and 20 people, at least half of whom are willing to read aloud. (And be prepared for some of the people you invite to not make it, whether or not they say they will. I prefer to require RSVPs ahead of time, but I\u2019m a control freak.) Don\u2019t forget to tell the attendees to bring stories and\/or friends; also make it clear that anyone who\u2019s uncomfortable reading aloud (or just doesn\u2019t want to, for whatever reason) can come to listen and eat. Audiences are as necessary as readers (it takes at least two people to have a story reading, one to listen and one to read). Be sure to tell everyone who\u2019s going to read to choose and practice stories ahead of time; see later in this guide for suggestions on preparing stories<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Once you know when people are coming, and how many will be there, you need to set up the place where the reading will be held.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Refreshments are always a good idea (you might get everyone to bring some, or rotate the location so that nobody has to pay for all the food all the time). Some kinds of party food are good for story reading, others less so. Something to drink is essential, preferably juice rather than soda; this is to soothe throats after talking for a long time. (I\u2019m told that alcoholic beverages also work for this purpose, but I don\u2019t recommend getting drunk at story reading.) If you\u2019re going to provide something to eat, try to find non-crunchy foods; it\u2019s a little distracting to listen to someone munching on a hard pretzel while you\u2019re trying to read a story out loud. (This is assuming people will be eating while things are being read. If people are going to eat only during pauses between stories, just about any kind of food is good (though high-sugar stuff might wreck the relaxed atmosphere).) I tend to get cheese and crackers a lot. Hot chocolate is good for cold, rainy nights when the wind howls through the empty streets outside; a fire is also nice, if you can get one, though perhaps a bit distracting.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Which brings me to lighting. If this is going to be a horror or ghost-story reading, you might want to consider dim lights, or having one lighted chair where the current reader can sit, leaving the rest in darkness. (MH retold \u201cThe Monkey\u2019s Paw\u201d at a cast party once, with no lights except for a flashlight with which he projected his hand, curled into a claw, on the ceiling. It was terrifying.) If there\u2019ll mostly be happy and funny stories, or if you don\u2019t know what the mood will be, leave the lights on; it\u2019ll help keep people awake through any slow parts. You can always turn off lights to change the mood for individual stories.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Seating is important as well; there should be soft, comfortable seats of a sort that people don\u2019t mind sitting on for long periods of time. Unless you have one position that\u2019s always the reader\u2019s chair, sitting in a circle is best. Sitting on the floor works well if there are pillows and\/or rugs.<\/p>\r\n\r\n One more environmental factor: sound. Since story reading involves listening to someone read, it\u2019s probably not a good idea to put hard rock on the stereo, or to read in the room next to where a wild party is going on. (I recommend not allowing people to play recordings of performers reading or telling stories; such recordings tend to have a deleterious effect on readings, in my experience.) If you must have background music, something without words is probably best; if you don\u2019t mind it, New Age music tends to (for me, anyway) automatically slip into the background whether or not anything else is happening. But I really recommend not using music at all unless a reader requests it for an individual story.<\/p>\r\n\r\n This section is for both the host and the attendees; it provides some suggestions on choosing and reading well.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Choosing a good read-aloud story can be difficult; a marvelous story on the printed page can fall completely flat when spoken. Here\u2019s what works best for me: First of all, stories should be short. A good rule of thumb is that a normal page of a book (whether hardback or paperback) takes about two minutes to read out loud (though there\u2019s a little variation with tone and style of story and from reader to reader). Unfortunately, many of the best printed short stories are 40-50 pages long, which makes them too long to read all at once. Remember that a 20-page story may take 45 minutes. That\u2019s a long time to expect most people to sit still and listen. People may be used to reading to themselves for that long at a stretch, but most people rarely have to actively and carefully listen to anything for that long without a break; anything over 20 pages in one sitting is likely to foster restlessness, sleep, or outright revolt.<\/p>\r\n\r\n If there\u2019s a long story, or an entire book, that you just have<\/em> to read, consider breaking it into chunks and reading them at consecutive readings. JM and I, alternating chapters, once read The Phantom Tollbooth<\/cite> that way; that worked partly because the chapters can be read fairly independently, so people can miss a week or three, or come in on the middle, and not be confused. I (following MK\u2019s example) read The Princess Bride<\/cite> one semester in college, ten to twenty pages a week; that worked because almost everyone who attended had either seen the movie or read the book, and I never read a chapter when the one person who\u2019d done neither was absent. I recommend not reading strongly-plotted novels as serials because you\u2019ll too rarely have an identical audience from reading to reading. If you do end up reading such a book as a serial, give a summary of the story so far before starting each installment. It also may help (I did this with Princess Bride<\/cite> ) to re-read the last paragraph or so of the previous installment to get people back into the story before going on to a new section.<\/p>\r\n\r\n So much for length. As for content:<\/p>\r\n\r\n Children\u2019s stories tend to work well, possibly because many were written to be read aloud to children (and there are an awful lot of \u201cchildren\u2019s\u201d books which are at least as enjoyable for adults). Since the amount of text on a page of, say, Dr. Seuss is much less than that on a page of, say, Kafka, you can modify the length guidelines accordingly. JW read all of Bunnicula<\/cite> one night (but he did break halfway through and let a few others read stories before he went on to finish, and he did ask us then if we wanted to hear the rest of it). Some groups may not be interested in hearing children\u2019s stories; their loss, but don\u2019t force them to listen to something they don\u2019t want to.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Fantasy tends to work well, too, maybe because it draws from a linguistic history eventually reaching back to oral traditions and folktales (though of course not all fantasy reads well out loud). Science fiction in general works less well, particularly nuts-\u2019n\u2019-bolts \u201chard\u201d SF, which often requires frequent reference back to earlier parts of the book for comprehension, something you can\u2019t do when listening to someone read aloud. (This isn\u2019t true only of hard SF, of course. While reading The Silmarillion<\/cite> to myself, for instance, I had to constantly refer to the index of characters to keep track of who was who). The sound of what\u2019s being read can be at least as important as the sense when reading aloud, and SF written by physicists may be more concerned with plausibility of technical speculation than with sounding good out loud. Stories with lots of sensory imagery tend to be good. Note that different people read different sorts of stories well, though some things seem to work regardless of who reads them.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Humor almost always works well. Enough laughs in a story will excuse almost anything, including length. (But remember that not everyone shares your sense of humor. You may want to think twice before reading something really gross or semi-offensive; others may not find it as funny as you do.)<\/p>\r\n\r\n Suspense stories can be good, though you should remember that you\u2019ll probably take twice as long reading them out loud as you would reading them silently, so the suspense may either build up to unbearable levels or fizzle (if you give someone time to spot the twist ending, it may not pack as much of a twist).<\/p>\r\n\r\n And then there are other stories that don\u2019t fit any of the categories I\u2019ve mentioned but that just plain work<\/em> for no obvious reason. I usually have a good idea of what will work and what won\u2019t, but I\u2019m occasionally wrong; stories that I think are incredibly good or funny will go over in dead silence, while a story that I think might marginally be readable will hold everyone in rapt attention all the way through (the latter happened with Beagle\u2019s \u201cCome, Lady Death\u201d; the former with a brief excerpt from Delany\u2019s \u201cTime Considered as a Helix of Semiprecious Stones\u201d). Part of whether a story works or not has to do with the reader; but the writing itself is usually the main thing that makes or breaks the story.<\/p>\r\n\r\nHow to have a story reading, simple method<\/h2>\r\n\r\n
How to have a story reading, complex method<\/h2>\r\n\r\n
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Planning a Reading<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Scheduling and Invitations<\/h4>\r\n\r\n
Environmental Preparations<\/h4>\r\n\r\n
Preparing to Read Aloud<\/h3>\r\n\r\n
Choosing a Story<\/h4>\r\n\r\n