You Have FIVE Minutes, People! – Adapting Prose for Author Live Reading

It’s Not Easy to Choose

When it comes to reading a snippet from one of my books in a short time frame, it’s nearly impossible to find a passage that will work exactly as written. I always have to adapt the passage in some way – for length or to simply make it easier to read aloud.

It is not a rule that an author must read verbatim from the book, as I say in Surviving That First Reading. At a recent event, a newer writer asked me how I decided what to read, and how I adapted it to the short time frame of five minutes.

Here’s what I tried to explain – tangents, jokes perhaps only I am amused by, non sequitors, and all.

Start by Picking a Suitable Passage

Quoting myself from Surviving That First Reading, here’s a recap of my criteria for a good reading selection:

• Choose something that’s within my confidence and competence level.
• Pick a scene that’s earlier in the story.
• Don’t read the big dramatic scene.
• Be aware of the audience and venue when it comes to explicit content.

Five Minutes Includes the Setup

I interpret “five minutes” to mean from the moment I open my mouth to the moment I head back to my chair. That means the setup comes out of the total time. Make every second count.

• Write out an explicit setup, practice it and spend no more than 30 seconds saying it. If it takes longer than 30 seconds to prep the audience for the passage, pick a different passage.
• Saying that another way: Do not ad lib the setup. I’ll think it took 30 seconds when it took 90 seconds or more.

This Time I Thought I Had It Easy

I recently participated in the author spotlight series at the GCLS 2025 Albany Conference. My new book was Frosting on the Cake 3: Still Crazy After All These Years.

I’m not going to lie – I have a favorite story in the collection: “Mona Lisa” which is told in first person by Lisa Gerritsen, a prominent secondary character in both Warming Trend and My Lady Lipstick. Lisa and I have a very specific thing in common.

We both think we’re right nearly all the time, and this fact goes unappreciated by those around us.

Lisa’s sarcastic, long-suffering voice is so vivid in my head that her Chapter One walk-on in Warming Trend lasted the entire book, and then she showed up – not really asking my permission, mind you – in My Lady Lipstick. She also features in “Good Morning” from the Frosting #2 collection when her beleaguered BFF Ani has to help her find an affordable and perfect wedding dress in a single day.

I was literally rubbing my hands together in glee as I anticipated reading from Lisa’s story at the conference. I had read a passage with Lisa from Warming Trend years earlier and loved doing it. Here’s proof (with apologies for the muddy audio).

But I Didn’t Have It Easy

Lisa’s entire story, “Mona Lisa,” is 2,600 words. Lisa’s a fast talker. I know from experience that a five-minute light and bubbly reading, with setup, runs at best 900 words or so. Okay, I think. I’ll just read the opening after I trim the non sequiturs, random observations, and anything else that won’t make sense to readers who are new to the character.

Lisa, as I should have recalled, is nothing but non sequiturs and random observations. Instead of the lovely stream of consciousness that is the original (including a 20 degrees below zero game of Settlers of Catan), Lisa’s first-person narrative sounded like her brain was a stone skipping on a shallow, silly pond. And I couldn’t do that to her because it is the bane of her life that people think she’s a flake at first sight.

It’s the boobs, seriously, SO many people think her boobs are large because unused brain matter has drained into them. They often think that to their eventual detriment, FYI.

Hecka and dagnabbit! It wasn’t going to work. I needed about eight minutes, and eight is more than five. (Except for very large values of five.)
(That’s a math joke. I couldn’t resist.)

Switching to What Worked

I was in denial about the situation for quite a while. Common sense won out, in the end, and I chose the opening of “Kindling” which features Tam and Kip from my romance Goldie winner Above Temptation.

The pictures below show what I changed to make the reading as short and clear as possible. Because it was from a short story inspired by a novel, I decided it was prudent to assume the audience had not read the original source material (more about that below).

The first 350 words were great! Not much to snip out, no tongue twisters. Yay me. The second 350 words, though, just as the themes of the short story are revealed, were in need of some stabby cuts and verbal fine tuning – and taking out callbacks to the original.

You might want to alt-click / right-click / whatever-click to view each image in its own window.

And yes, that’s it. One five-minute reading and setup fits on two pages at 13-point sans serif font.

For those curious about the step-by-step, here you go.

Cosmetics for Ease of Reading Aloud

The very first thing I do is copy the entire scene (in this case, the whole story) into a new document. Then I turn on track changes so I can easily change my mind.

The document layout – which I call “live reading 2-column landscape” is the result of years of tweaking. The font is larger and sans serif, which I prefer in this context.

Why two columns? After I print the pages, I fold each one between the columns. Now the pages are not much wider than any book.

A) That makes them easy to tuck inside the actual book for this and future readings..

B) I turn the pages as I would those in the print book, which is the most natural gesture in the world for me as a human being and the double thickness of paper is easy to grasp without picking up the page(s) underneath. Ease of holding and turning makes a difference when there’s no podium. Think about holding a book open to the first few pages in one hand for five minutes. Now imagine your hands are sweaty because you have flop sweats (I still get them) or a dexterity issue with either hand (like the damage of arthritis or carpal tunnel). Consider what happens if you need to switch hands and drop the book.

And C) When reading, my eye only needs to travel 3.5″ before moving to a new line, and there’s lots of white space on the ragged right margin to help guide my eye. Long ago, I printed scenes the full width of the page and lost my place. That hasn’t happened since I started printing two-columns on landscape – except for the one time I printed the right margin justified, which is why now it’s ragged.

Last thing about cosmetics, any dialogue is formatted to display in a color. The color alerts me as I approach it that I need to switch to Voice 1, Voice 2, etc. (I try to limit myself to 2 voices; they’re not my strong suit.) The opening of this story only had one instance. Cool!

Then the Actual Adapting

1. After the cosmetic changes are done, I read aloud the first 1,100 words (or so) of the 4,200-word story. It took about 7 minutes, and that told me I’d have to cut between 200-300 words before it was ready. I thought that seemed doable, notably a paragraph of setting description.
2. Considered if, somewhere around the 800-1000 mark, there was a natural place to end. A good punch line, an intriguing, foreshadowing thought, or a cliffhanger action? I thought so. It’s an important question to ask. Other stories in the collection were paced very differently, and no amount of cutting would create a good stopping place early enough.
3. Noted where I ran out of breath in long sentences and broke them in two.
4. Discovered tongue-twisters and either practiced or changed them.
5. Heard where, when read aloud, actions or dialogue seemed unattributed because the listener can’t see quote marks, nor line and paragraph breaks. Added something for clarity.
6. Read aloud again. Still around 7 minutes, but a smoother 7 minutes.
7. Wrote the setup and made it short. Super short. Mentioned host. Name of book. The barest plot and setting essentials as tightly as possible. The listeners don’t need to be told what I’m going to tell them. For example, if the passage says they’re in a coffee shop, I don’t have to say so in the setup.
8. I practice the setup until it flows well, which makes me feel very confident as I move into the main performance of the reading.
9. Then it’s time to get stabby with the text – find the cuts that leave flow intact but reduce the reading to the time limit. (See next section.)
10. If I’m still struggling with time I tighten up longer sentences or eliminate dialogue that’s not completely essential.
11. Before printing, I make sure a paragraph is complete at the bottom of each column, whenever possible, so a pause to turn a page is also a breathing pause between paragraphs.

Oh Dear, Oh Dear, What to Cut?

What to cut is always a challenge. The easier cuts are usually extra scene setting as I mentioned above, references to previous events in the story, and when the character has a side thought that’s not directly relevant to what the listener needs to know. For example, thinks about a call she needs to make to a character not otherwise mentioned about an issue that’s not described any further either.

The challenge of adapting a short story inspired from established work(s)? The callbacks. Callbacks to the source material is essential for the fan who’s read the original – they tie short story and novel together. For this live reading, I’ve assumed no one had read the original source material. That means callbacks are probably going to be confusing.

That the women have been together a while, and both work in financial auditing and fraud, is apparent from context, so I cut almost all callbacks to Above Temptation and “Snap Judgment” in Frosting #2.

My Goals for Those Five Minutes

After I did that I had a scene about a (beginning) sleepy wake-up morning in a chilly autumn cabin, (middle) as one woman admires her wife chopping wood and muses on their life. Which (end) isn’t as idyllic as it ought to be, and that’s a sore spot in her happiness she hasn’t been able to fix.

That’s the goal of a live reading for me: giving the listener a complete experience. Beginning and middle are the bulk of what I read. The end – as short as a sentence – promises that, now that the problem / conflict has been identified, the rest of the tale will contain satisfying explanations and resolutions.

At the same time, I want to show how much I love what I’ve written and make my words as shiny as possible. Most of all, I want to leave a good taste in the listener’s mind – a perfect bite, complete in itself – and hopefully leaving them wanting another. In this case, another cupcake.

What Works for You?

One last thing, though. What works for me may not work for anyone else. I’m a romance writer, and my live reading grows out of my genre and my style. Like Lisa, I might think the world should listen to me and do everything the right way (which purely coincidentally would also be my way), but there are people who scoff at this premise. Like my wife, for example.

I also don’t mean to make it appear that I did this from the start with a magically innate sense of performance and what the audience wants. It took making mistakes, practice, making MORE mistakes, MORE practice, and finally it feels like I have it down to what works for me. By sharing my process I hope to save someone out there a mistake or two along the way to finding the perfect style for them.

Whatever style makes you feel confident and that your words are sparkling and shiny as they flow out into the air? THAT is the right way.

That’s true in live readings – and in the writing itself. If it works for you, that’s the right way.

Oh, and I almost forgot – how did it turn out? I ended with 13 seconds to spare.

Copyrighted Material