This article is the second in a series designed to help you stage more effective readings. Thank you to author Clare Toohey for sharing her wisdom, originally posted on Women of Mystery.
LENGTH
Now everyone is a little different, of course, and I’ve often heard (and even told people before now!) to plan on reading about one MS page per minute, so usually, around 250 words. However, over time, I’ve now decided, at least for my own work, to really deliver it the way I want, the speed is a LOT more like 150 words/minute.
Nervousness, when readers are in front of a real audience, will almost always makes them speedier, and that can impact the listener’s ability to follow the thread of the narration. Also, the occasional, deliberate pause is 
extremely important for effect and emphasis, as well as comprehension. Please take that breath!
In my case, I really thought I had the final selection done, but once I started practicing aloud, it was clearly way over my 10-minute allotment, so I went back to editing and editing until I had the right time. Finally, finally, it fell in at about 1670 words in 10 minutes. For me, that was almost 6 full, double-spaced manuscript pages in 12 pt font. If I’d already known how slow I was really going to want to read–and I won’t forget now that I’ll have this post to remind me—I could have saved myself some time tweezing at the margins while I still needed a machete.
In the case of my very-short story, which I was aiming to read in its entirety, I believe my repeated cut-downs made it stronger, because every word had to serve a purpose to be allowed to stay. Yes, I know we all hear that this should be our goal in every sentence, but let’s be frank, in a 90,000-word novel, there will be some prose that’s a little less purposeful and muscular, so to speak. All the re-reading during the revision process also made my reading smoother, so when I got to doing it live, I was more comfortable, having half-memorized it in the process.
By my lights, 10 minutes is about the maximum enjoyable duration for any single piece in a setting that’s not designed for performance. By that, I mean not in a theater, not by a voice actor, no paid tickets, stuck in the corner of the library’s reading room, that kind of thing. So, once my selection was appropriately whittled down, I printed out a fresh copy for the evening’s real notations.
—Clare Toohey
Click here to read part 1 of this essay.
Click here to read part 3 of this essay.
Clare Toohey is a genre hack and friendly contrarian who wrangles CriminalElement.com and also blogs for WomenofMystery.net. A literary omnivore who wants a taste off your plate, she adores the uncanny as well as New England sports.