Writer’s Dispatch

Proofreading for the Unnatural Writer — Wizardry for the Word Blind

Three tricks I’ve developed to make my writing understandable

I may have dyslexia, that’s the conclusion of several online assessments, but it’s not something I’ve followed up on.

The time when a test would have been useful was about 40 or more years ago when I was at school. Back then, this wasn't something I was aware of.

Disappointingly, none of my teachers engaged their curiosity as to why I struggled to express my ideas on paper — my poor performance was put down to a lack of interest.

As I said at the beginning, I’m not declaring myself as dyslexic. This is out of respect for those who are currently battling with their language skills.

If you are one of these people, and it’s having an impact on your life, do see someone — particularly if you’re studying. Often, there is support in place to help students who‘ve been diagnosed with dyslexia.

From my perspective, I left school and sprinted from then until now. In those years, I developed some strategies to get by.

In the last decade, writing has become a big part of my life. Each of my feature films has needed multiple screenplay drafts (even the terrible un-produced ones).

In writing those drafts, I used these tricks — they became ingrained. As of now, I write every day. These little bolt-ons are the final part of my process.

That’s enough of my journey, this post is about sharing some tips. I hope that they’re useful to anyone who’s struggling to capture their ideas.

🟢 They’re not magic, they’re simple, and functional.

🟢 They focus my mind.

🟢 They turn my initial unreadable mess into something others can read, and hopefully understand.

The focused re-read

The first thing I tried, after I’d finished writing each draft, was something I’m sure a lot of people do.

🖨️ I would print the workout and read it word by word — pausing after each word. This takes quite a lot of focus, particularly on long documents.

🗣️ Sometimes, on a bad day, I‘d read the words allowed. I would normally resort to this if the words were losing their meaning, or I was struggling to concentrate.

This got me so far, but my work was still difficult for people to understand. I would still miss words. I can remember a first draft coming back from a trusted friend with more corrections than the script. I needed a more robust method.

The line-through read-through

As I looked to improve my consistency, I explored ways of enhancing my focus on each word.

🖨️ I printed out the document, just as before.

✍️ This time, as I read each word, I would cross it out. This helped a lot and reduced my word skipping quite a bit.

With this small change, I became more confident in showing my work.

I’ve written and completed several scripts using this method.

…and that was it. I assumed I’d found the solution, albeit a very time-consuming one. Then one day, completely by accident, I discovered a tool that changed everything.

The voice that reads

Every day, on pretty much most sentences I write — and I mean every sentence I write — before the world sees what I’ve written, I do this…

💻 I select all the text I’ve written.

⌨️ I hit the option key and s on my Mac — This is a shortcut I’ve set up.

🤖 A computer voice immediately begins to read my work back to me.

⌚️ Discovering the text-to-speech function on my Mac has been life-changing. It means I can get through the once tedious proofing stage in a fraction of the time.

⁉️ I’m not overly familiar with modern Windows or Linux systems. If you know how to access this function on those platforms, it would be great if you could add instructions in the comments.

Final thoughts and caveats

That’s it, these are the three things I’ve used over the years to help get my words out to the world.

As I said at the beginning, I may have some minor reading or writing issues. I don’t want to diminish anyone else's challenges. My only aim is to share some strategies that have helped me.

If you have any thoughts or are struggling with similar issues, I’m interested in hearing from you — please do share your comments.

Just time for one final listen back, and then I’ll hit publish.

P.S.: If you’ve got this far, you might want to sign up for my weekly email — get exclusive access to my subscriber-only giveaways, and all my secrets and learning. Join here, and be part of the discussion.