A Quote by Esther Freud

A story needs rhythm. Read it aloud to yourself. If it doesn't spin a bit of magic, it's missing something. — © Esther Freud
A story needs rhythm. Read it aloud to yourself. If it doesn't spin a bit of magic, it's missing something.
I never send a story off until I have read it aloud to at least two or three people. Because when I read - and I don't need their criticism, what I need is my own - when I read it aloud, there is a flow, there is a poetry to it.
I've often made revisions at that stage that turned out to be mistakes because I wasn't really in the rhythm of the story anymore. I see a little bit of writing that doesn't seem to be doing as much work as it should be doing, and right at the end, I will sort of rev it up. But when I finally read the story again, it seems a bit obtrusive.
One way to be aware of it, to teach to yourself, is simply to read work aloud. I love reading the endings of books aloud when I start nearing the end.
If we are always reading aloud something that is more difficult than children can read themselves then when they come to that book later, or books like that, they will be able to read them - which is why even a fifth grade teacher, even a tenth grade teacher, should still be reading to children aloud. There is always something that is too intractable for kids to read on their own.
For me, even in the most subtle and introspective story, it's all about tension: this is the thread that ties a reader to story, something in the rhythm and in the argument that hypnotizes and pushes us to read with great attention. As a reader, I love the storytellers who play with this, and as a writer it is something I always look for.
I'm trying to make the poems as musical as I can - from the inception. So that whether they're read on the page, or people read them aloud, or I read them aloud, the musicality will be kind of a given.
The baby explodes into an unknown world that is only knowable through some kind of a story – of course that is how we all live, it’s the narrative of our lives, but adoption drops you into the story after it has started. It’s like reading a book with the first few pages missing. It’s like arriving after curtain up. The feeling that something is missing never, ever leaves you – and it can’t, and it shouldn’t, because something is missing.
And so he was reading the story as if it were a spell and the words of it, spoken aloud, could make magic happen.
When I start writing for the day, I usually read aloud the chapter I'm working on. It gets me into it and illuminates mistakes. I'm very rhythm conscious and I do enjoy repetition.
I read the Bible to myself; I'll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.
It thought about the magic that happens when you tell a story right, and everybody who hears it not only loves the story, but they love you a little bit, too, for telling it so well. Like I love Ms. Washington, in spite of myself, the first time I heard her. When you hear somebody read a story well, you can't help but think there's some good inside them, even if you don't know them.
We have an obligation to read aloud to our children. To read them things they enjoy. To read to them stories we are already tired of. To do the voices, to make it interesting, and not to stop reading to them just because they learn to read to themselves. Use reading-aloud time as bonding time, as time when no phones are being checked, when the distractions of the world are put aside.
There's always an added element of a poem when it's read aloud because then you can really hear the rhythm, and the cadence, and even the pronunciation sometimes adds another layer to the poem.
Every time you read a poem aloud to yourself in the presence of others, you are reading it into yourself and them. Voice helps to carry words farther and deeper than the eye.
To understand Vers libre, one must abandon all desire to find in it the even rhythm of metrical feet. One must allow the lines to flow as they will when read aloud by an intelligent reader.
Readers re-create any story to suit their own needs. They re-clothe the story in their own shirts. Put simply: just as we write the story we need to write, they read the story they need to read.
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