Danger Quest Mysteries

Writing, Speech, and Revision

Reading the “Mysteries of the Bicycle Explained” stories aloud (over and over again) for my podcast has lead me to make some changes– sometimes improvised on the spot, sometimes calculated– to increase the comic effect.  I’m sure I should have tried this before, but I actually I thought I did… Only, when reading to myself only, I may have read silently some of the time, with silent hearing of my own voice. Now I see that takes less effort that way, it’s quicker… and much less effective. Maybe what really made the difference is that I did not read with a sense of reading for others (like recording for podcast)… Others staring at me and implicitly wondering if it’s worth their time to pay attention. I didn’t focus on the effort to entertain another person with my voice’s tone, timing, and stress. This is more important when trying to amuse… I didn’t plumb the eloqutionary quadrants for insight into deeper nonsense. And I think that has opened up some opportunistic moments for humor in my stories.