2022.12.24 – 0723 – Reading Lists
Lists (or ‘strings’) and credits
Lists are boring so it is your job to make them sound less so.
We’re talking about maybe a news story on the selling points of a showbiz star’s home that’s up for sale or a roll-call of credits at the end of an audio drama. You have to read the uninspiring script in an interesting way, rather than simply rattling it off.
“It has eight bedrooms, six bathrooms, a heated garage and stables, a gym and home cinema, and an underground walkway to another separate home on the property.”
In this situation you need to add variety and interest by using some of the various elements that we have looked at already:
· alter the pitch slightly on each item. That’s not simply going up and then down a range but finding an almost random variety. “Almost random”? Yes, it would be daft to go from a high pitch to a low one for example.
· vary the rate and even a pause or two to help highlight some of the more unusual features.
So, it could go “eight bedrooms” and the inflection upward on “six” and stay up in pitch on “bathrooms”. You’d want to lift “heated” as that is the unusual part about the garage and so too “and stables” expressing some surprise, then perhaps speed up through “a gym and home cinema” as these are perhaps to be expected in such a property, and then draw out the next “and”, followed by a slow and low reading of the final phrase because it is unusual.
This subtle ‘mix-up of movement’ will help engage the listener’s interest, changing the copy enough to make it more dynamic and easier for the listener to understand.
Many lists are short, often three items because of the accompanying satisfying rhythm (“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, “Friends, Romans, Countrymen”, “Faith, Hope, and Charity”… itself a ‘list of three’!), so when you have such a string, the first item could be read in a ‘standard’ way, the second with an upward inflection (offering difference and a suggestion that there is more to come), followed by a slight pause and the third item with a downward inflection to show that the list has ended.
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