3. Everyone Hates The Sound Of Their Voice..!

It seems almost universal that people hate the sound of their own voice. Seven and a half hours into reviewing my book by reading it out loud, I wholeheartedly agree!

I’d always intended to read the book out loud as a part of my review process but skipped it during the first review in the interests of quickly getting the book out to test readers. I toyed with skipping the audio review altogether but it turned out that one of my test readers - a best mate who I regularly bounce story ideas off - hates to read! Shocking I know but I was still keen for him to critique this story. So the audio recording resumed and I sent him chapters in batches. There’s been no word yet that he’s torn his ears off!

As annoying as my voice may be after then nth hour of recording, the audio review has been incredibly useful. Reading aloud forces me to consider every word and piece of punctuation, meaning that spelling mistakes and hanging sentences are much less likely to occur. I have rectified clunky language and made dialogue sound much more natural. It has also allowed me to tighten the wording, freeing up my total word count for areas of greater description that have been requested by my test readers.

This stage of the review has taken longer than expected - partially due to an incredibly busy period at work - but the results make it worth it. I’m 60% through the audio edit but will place it on temporary hold while I finalise the first few chapters to release as a teaser on the website. I have finally taken some time off work in the lead up to Christmas so will be able to dive back into the audio edit with full energy in no time!