The Cambridge introduction to creative writing

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of your workshop or class. Take one phrase from Shakespeare at random it should be a relatively short and uncomplicated sentence such as I will play the swan, and die in music. Everybody should move around the room saying this phrase aloud, quite naturally, while having one arm raised before them as though being led through the dark. Now, cease moving and pass the phrase from one to another, raising your arm slowly to point at the person who will say it next, in effect loosing the phrase through the air between you.
When it is your turn, take a deep breath and, as you raise your arm, begin to exhale gradually saying nothing for one second, then emitting the phrase on the length of the remaining breath the breath turning into sound. Try,
verbally, to throw the phrase evenly, clearly and firmly across the room so it meets the ear of the next speaker with as much volume and clarity as if they were standing next to you. The phrase is not peeping out of your mouth this is not muttering. You must push up from your diaphragm, below your stomach,
using the diaphragm to control the exhalation of breath and, by default, the projection of the phrase. In Your Voice and How to Use It, Cicely Berry, Voice
Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, says:
as you release the breath into sound the whole of your chest cavity will add its vibrations and resonance and contribute to the sound . . . your whole body becomes part of the sound, giving it solidity, firmness and edge . . . The voice will spring of its own impulse – like loosing an arrow 31)
Pools and stream of speech
Many creative writers use the page of a manuscript or book as a screen behind which to hide. They read at the page, and not to the audience, creating an unnecessary distance and bouncing their voice behind them. Before you read,
look at the audience even talk to some audience members in order to break the ice and get a few of them on your side. While you are reading, lookup regularly;
even look one or two of the audience in the eye fora moment, as you read. Try to look at everybody at least once.
A writer who looks up to their audience draws their audience to them.
The way to do this is to read ahead in the text with the eye (if you have not memorised the piece. With a story, you should be reading one sentence ahead of what is coming out of your mouth with a poem you should be reading two lines ahead of what you are speaking. This allows you time to communicate with the audience, and think about how to frame particular sentences or lines.
It also avoids your being caught out by something surprising, then misreading and fluffing a line.

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Creative writing
There are four verbal equivalents of looking up at the audience they are still pools along a stream of speech. Pausing places silences into your reading. Silence, even a short pause, makes the audience wait when you resume speaking they will listen even more acutely. Use silence regularly and knowingly. Changing the pitch and inflection of voice will maintain interest (just as a monotone will kill it. Altering the pace of your speech between readings and commentaries and within pieces will keep attention, as will changing the volume of your voice in as natural away as possible. None of these is an artificial or rhetorical trick. Pausing, inflection, pace and volume are simply the classic meters by which we unconsciously guide good conversation. Silence allows our conversational partner, the audience, the time to prepare their mental and emotional responses.
Stand with your feet flat on the ground. Stay still while you are reading any tension will transit itself through the soles of your feet, but keeping your feet completely flat will make you feel grounded and stable, a trick used by actors and politicians. By keeping still, you do not distract the audience by body language or irritating gestures. You focus their attention on your mouth and your voice. As you read, be sure to use the whole of your mouth, as newsreaders do. Tongue, teeth and lips must all be brought into play, allowing clarity of delivery, for clarity and intelligibility exceed expression in importance.
Voice work for creative writers has the same purpose as for actors or professional speakers. It is not about correcting your voice it is about allowing the natural flows of your speech their speeds and slows. If you ever find that your mouth is, as it were, in a tight corner of panic during performance, remember just this one trick. Actively move your lower jaw downwards and keep it in that position. This should go along way to removing the muscular tension damming your mouth and lower face. It can even release the lock of stagefright or a stammer. If you stutter, as the author of this book does along with a number of writers, it need not bar you from performing your work. A stutter often vanishes in performance.
Reading a reading
I suggested in Chapter
One that if you are not interested in reading the work of other authors, why should anybody be interested in reading you The same goes for creative writing in live performance. You learn by going to festivals of new writing, and to live readings, and watching, hearing, then imitating,
writers in performance. There is a breadth of working practice, from po-face to panache, from the amateur to the avant-garde. Read these performances make notes on what works for you and for the audience. You will begin to recognise

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that reading your work aloud to yourself and your friends in a workshop is one matter, while reading to an audience of strangers sets the bar higher.

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