March 2007 Archives

I saw a post on another blog a few minutes ago that compelled me to respond. Someone else had commented that they were wary of authors reading their own books for the audio version because reading aloud is hard to do properly. The podiobooks blog author asserted that reading aloud for audiobooks could not be difficult since that person's mother read to him/her when s/he was a child. Before I answered, I guess I should have noticed that the post was filed under Rants. Anyway, I'm including my comments about the difficulty imposed by audiobook narration here on my blog for your comments and discussion.

As an audiobook narrator, I agree with the original post and Tim's reply to this message. Reading aloud is not hard in the sense that lives aren't hanging in the outcome or the balance of world power won't shift with every utterance. However, lifting sentences off the printed page and breathing life into them so that they flow effortlessly while maintaining the author's perspective is an acquired skill.

I know how to write words. I can use a pen and paper to form words, or I can type very fast on my computer in a word processing program. I constantly use this ability to write in order to produce a variety of things: proposals for voice-over projects, blog posts, letters to friends and family, etc.

Yet I would say that writing a novel is hard. (There's that word again.) Writing a novel that becomes a published work of material seems even more difficult. How many people say they would like to write a novel, and how many people actually DO it? To become a published novelist such as Mr. Gaiman, one must have tremendous energy and focus. One must be able to take an ordinary skill that most people possess, like the ability to write words, and be able to string those words together in a fashion that would interest other people enough to want to pay to read them. I haven't been able to do it. Writing a novel therefore seems like hard work to me.

I can understand the original poster's view about being wary of audiobooks performed by the author. Audiobook narration is a performance, that, like the printed book, will last forever. It's not like a child's mother reading a bedtime story where the main goal is to lull the listener to sleep. Neither the child nor the mother care about the quality of the reading.

Audiobook listeners, on the other hand, DO care about the quality of the narration. Audiobooks are an intimate medium. The reason people enjoy reading so much is because their imagination is running the movie of the words in their head. A good audiobook narrator can make the audio version of a book seem like a movie, where someone who is not as adept at this type of performance can ruin the experience for the listener.

A good narrator will make the performance transparent and SEEM like the easiest thing on earth....just like talking. However, good narrators usually have completed professional training in voice-over and also have thoroughly prepared the material they are reading by researching pronunciations and determining characterizations before they ever walked into the recording studio.

A few weeks ago, Drew told me that he found himself critiquing the voice-over actors on local radio commercials. He said he could recognize voice talent who need more training because they haven't learned how to sound conversational in their reads. Among other things, he astutely detected that amateurs invariably let their voices trail off at the ends of sentences.

That same day, I called a major entertainment venue here in Atlanta to learn information about an upcoming event. I was rather shocked to hear a voice message in which the events and ticket prices were read in a choppy, uneven manner by someone with an accent. While some local commercials are produced by people with limited budgets, this complex has revenues in the millions each year. Its operations department unquestionably could afford to hire professional voice talent but has not.

In both cases, a professional voice-over artist like me could be tempted to offer her services to these businesses to fix their problems. However, both the people producing the commercials and those at the entertainment venue don't think that they have a problem. My efforts therefore would fall in the category of unsolicited advice and most likely anger the people that I most wanted to impress.

I learned this lesson the hard way. As I was beginning my voice-over career, I wrote an e-mail to a local car dealer who runs a lot of radio ads. With my infinite wisdom, I explained that the dealer's ads about Jenny in the office making a Bundt cake for all of the salesmen was offensive because it presented a very sexist and condescending attitude toward women. Mind you, I sent this message in the late 90s or early in this decade. The ad WAS sexist, but as a new voice talent who had no connection to this advertiser, it wasn't my place to point out that fact. Naturally, I happily identified myself as a voice-over talent and offered to assist the dealer with future commercials.

I have auditioned for that dealer's spots on numerous occasions but have never booked one. I have listened to my auditions against the ads that ran on the air. My vocal qualities and copy interpretation are eerily similar in many cases. Since I'm a positive person, I believe that maybe the producers knew the talent selected for the ads or perhaps never heard my auditions. I have to be honest, though, and acknowledge that an equally likely scenario is that my unsolicited advice was considered criticism and destroyed my chances of booking work with that advertiser.