This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the 48 second episode of the Helping Writers Become Authors

podcast. Lately I've been spending every spare minute reviewing the

audiobook version of my portal fantasy dreamlander and it's an interesting experience.

One, I'm actually not a big fiction audiobook fan.

Two, I've never liked being read aloud to.

Three, I've always hated hearing anyone, even myself, read my own work. And four, I wrote Dreamlander what now feels like a long time ago. Even though the book remains one of the ones I'm most proud of for a lot of

reasons and obviously still passionate about as I'm currently working on its sequels, it's hard not to hear all that

long published writing and start itching madly to get in there and edit.

Still, it definitely makes me reaffirm the common bit of advice about how helpful it is to listen to your own stuff read out loud.

Although I hope most of the things I would like to fiddle with aren't things most readers

would notice. The experience is definitely giving me ideas for how I will

edit future stories. So if you don't listen to your stuff read out loud, and if you don't, I don't

blame you. But if you don't, you might think about giving it a try, especially when

revisiting a story you've been letting rest for a while longer. It might give you some new

perspectives. And now I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast How to Transform

Infodumps into exciting plot reveals. Clues, mysteries, plot reveals, and plot twists.

These are some of the writer's stock tricks for hooking readers page after page.

But as important as these tricks are, when they're asked to bear the load of being the main

attraction for readers, they too often turn into boring infotops.

Imagine you're reading a story in which the author has skillfully created some

kind of mystery. This mystery might be the murder in a whodunit, a straightforward strategic puzzle focused on figuring out how to defeat the bad guys.

Something more domestic, such as an ongoing question of a character's parentage.

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