What Makes a Reading Effective / Part 4: The "Three Responses" a Narrator Should Be Conscious Of

Now, what kind of response should the narrator provide to help the listener climb the three steps of "understanding," "visualization," and "empathy" one by one? For the first step, "understanding," it is essential to adhere to common linguistic rules. Proper vocalization, standard accent, and correct intonation and phrasing. If these are disrupted, the listener's brain becomes preoccupied with the analytical task of "what did that mean?" making it difficult to proceed to the next step. This governs the "basic physical strength" of reading aloud, and I believe it can be called the minimum courtesy required to deliver the content of a story to the listener without stress. However, this does not go beyond the realm of "information transmission." I believe that the true worth of a reading performer is tested in the response to the second and third steps: "visualization and empathy."

Differentiating between narrative text and dialogue, the exquisite "pauses" when a scene changes, and the dynamics and inflections that express the nuances of emotion. All of these techniques are utilized to bring vivid scenes to life within the listener's mind.
The crucial point here is not to explain with words, for example, by saying "it was a red color," but to have the listener feel the "redness" itself in their heart. To use a metaphor, "speaking to make the content easy to visualize" and "speaking to make the image easy to feel" may seem similar, but there is a significant difference. The former is the task of presenting a "blueprint" to reach an image, while the latter is the task of breathing "body heat" into it.
The key to this "approach to sensibility," which goes beyond mere technical theory, lies in non-verbal information mediated by the voice, that is, the "components of the voice." No matter how clearly you speak or how correctly you read with the right accents, sometimes it just doesn't resonate with the heart.
To unravel the reason for this, I believe we need to rethink our own voices as a single "instrument" and deeply consider its components.