How to Give a Great Reading

Levitate the room.

Here I am on stage last week at Berry College. Jim Watkins took the photo.

When a writer stands up to give a reading, a current of energy whips around the room.

The energy is expectation. The better-known the writer, the higher the energy. Sitting in an audience, a person wonders—is this person going to turn my world upside down? Will this be an hour I never forget?

Or will this be an hour spent trapped in an outer ring of hell?

I’ve been a book-writer since 1999, and in those two decades I’ve given hundreds of talks. I’ve felt that current, over and over and over, enough to know that it is not an electricity to be ignored. I’m probably more scared of it now than I was when I gave my first reading. I’m also not saying that I give great readings, only that I’ve learned a few things about the stage, and I want to share these with you, so that when your turn next comes for you to get up and throw lightning bolts around a room, you’ll be better prepared.

What You Should Know

1. You feel like a hero standing up in front of folks, but you’re not the hero. The audience members are the heroes. If they were absent, you wouldn’t have a reading. You’d be calling for an Uber so you could go back to the Econolodge. Having an audience is gift. Don't take it for granted.

2. An audience understands the energy of a speaker very quickly and responds accordingly. You only have a few minutes to get on course.

3. You are not delivering something all tied up in a pretty pink bow. This is not a delivery. It is an interaction. A reading is not about I, it’s about we.

4. Don’t waste anybody’s time, not even your own.

5. Try to create an energy in the room that keeps would-be sleepers awake and wakes the sleepers. Such an energy cannot be created by becoming louder. It can’t be created with thriller drama. It’s created by a feeling—a power field—that story creates around itself, that you create with delivery, and that the audience creates with expectation and breathlessness.

6. More than tense waiting is involved, however.

7. In Vermont many years ago I attended a (boring) poetry reading. A woman sitting beside me in the audience grumbled, “A poet should levitate a room.”

8. Levitate a room.

9. Being nervous is okay—your nervousness adds to the energy—but it’s wasted if you talk fast. Make yourself slow down. Enunciate.

10. You’ve already had an epiphany because you wrote the piece, so now others are having a transformation. Let them.

11. Audience members are giving you something in return. They are giving you their

• attention

• inattention

• laughter

• tears

• sharp intakes of breath

• slow out-breaths

• tears rolling down cheeks.

Later they give you their questions.

10. Do not judge an audience by the reactions visible to you. I’ve made that mistake dozens of times. I leave a stage thinking, How stone-faced. They hated me. Then in the signing line I hear glowing comments that are big-hearted enough to float the Titanic.

11. One dude nodding off can ruin a great performance. Speak to everybody else, not to him. Hope nobody else is seeing him nap.

12. If possible, train yourself to speak off-script. I have no judgement about this—this has taken me years and years, but I’m finally getting there.

13. Memorize at least some of your work. Entire poems or paragraphs are great (necessary for spoken word) but even sentences or phrases are good. This is super-impressive.

14. Why not avoid PowerPoints and let the rhythm, lyricism, and magic of language carry you through?

15. Ninety-five percent of talks begin with obligatory thanks. For years now I have tried to start with something different, to surprise audience members right from the get-go. I stand up and shock listeners by starting with a poem or lyrical paragraph—one I’ve memorized—that lasts a minute or two. Then I quickly express gratitude and get the train rolling down the track.

16. Humor here is priceless. I’m too intense to be a funny person—we’re trying to save the world here, people—so I force myself to include some one-liners. Normally I’m opposed to self-deprecating humor, but it goes a long way when a writer (some of the most egotistical people in the world) takes the stage.

17. I employ eye contact. In the early days, I tried to meet every person’s eye in the auditorium at least once. This makes some people nervous. You can tell when people get nervous because they quickly look away if your eyes land on them. Make a mental note to look elsewhere. Let your eyes wander. Cover the entire auditorium. I say this because when I’m in an audience, I love the feeling I get when a famous speaker—Jane Goodall, for instance—looks directly at me. I feel seen. So make others feel seen.

Some Unforgettable Readings

Many years ago I heard Richard Nelson, author of The Island Within and other books on Alaska, tell the story of touching a deer on a wild island near Sitka. Recently I found that scene in the book (it starts on page 272, in case you’re looking.) When Nels returned home, as he explained, guests were visiting, but the event had been so powerful that he had to excuse himself to process what had just happened.) Onstage he recreated the same wild and chance energy, until the auditorium was silent, hundreds of people leaning forward, tense, breaths bated, waiting to see what happened.

I always loved hearing Pattiann Rogers read her poetry. That was always a jewel of an hour. I loved hearing Mary Oliver read at a church in Provincetown—I hung on to every word.

Once I was on a Forgotten Language Tour with Orion Magazine in the Yaak Valley of Montana. A freak storm hit that day. The nature writers were out in woods, looking around, when trees began to whip about and crash to the ground. The storm, some kind of microburst, was terrifying. That night a few writers were to read in a local lodge. Although the electricity was out, the reading went on by candlelight. Rick Bass read “Swamp Boy,” a piece of autofiction about a bullied child who loves nature. That was one of the most poignant readings I’ve ever heard.

In each of these cases the writer used energy to levitate a room. You can too. When your turn comes to read, don’t give a boring reading, because I hate drooling in public.

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Call it a novella or call it a novel or call it hybrid. In 14 months The Woods of Fannin County has 512 ratings, using stars, and 100 reviews, using words, on Amazon, which means that you or someone like you read it, rated it, and reviewed it.

😘 Every one of those stars is a little burst of goodness that I'm sending right back at you. Thank you 512 times.

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Magical Craft of Creative Nonfiction Starts Jan. 17

I have one course starting up in January. If this is one you’ve been waiting on, now’s the time to get registered. If you can’t swing the full amount and want to pay on time, that’s not a problem. Be in touch and we’ll figure out a way.

Register here.

Magical Craft of Creative Non-fiction 1.0 dives into craft and creative frameworks so that you can explore your passion for story, your desire to write, and your interest in exploring this art in order to make your stories readable, shareable, and publishable. In this course we dive into personal narrative, memoir, prose poetry, micro-memoir, and the flash essay. To write well, however, you’ll need more than craft and technique, and that is a direct line to mystery. I’ll show you some great ways to get there.

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Here are the details:

• We meet weekly over six weeks—Wednesday evenings 7-9 pm Eastern US Time

• Course is live via Zoom

• Course participant numbers not limited

What you get:

• Six exciting evenings where I pour my heart & soul into your heart & soul.

• My honest, authentic belief in you.

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Your investment:

• $500

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• Commitment to write during class sessions plus at least 1 additional hour a week minimum. If you can’t commit to this kind of time, then I may not be the guide for you.