Your performance may sound nothing like what the author had in her head when she wrote it. Honoring your limits-and working when you’re in best vocal shape-will make a book sound that much better. Your body will tell you what it can and can’t do. My weekends see five or so recording sessions per day.īut caring for my voice in between is crucial-whether that means using warm-up and cool-down vocal exercises or simply being silent.
After a full day of working at my 9-to-5 job, I can maybe record 40 pages before my voice gets tired or my brain begins jumbling up words on the page. My first audiobook, which was roughly 125,000 words and edited down to thirteen hours, took almost a month to record-working nights and weekends. Build up staminaĪudiobooks are a marathon, not a sprint.
Your regular narration voice is fine save the stylistics for your main lineup. It’s a rookie mistake-using different-sounding voices for nameless characters (the waitress in the diner, the cop on the beat) who have only a line or two in the entire book. Pro tip: Not every character needs characterization. A good trick is to base characters on someone you know-a relative or a good friend or someone famous. Starting someone out with a husky voice only to switch to a nasal one guarantees your listener will get confused if not lost. You’re embarking upon a long journey with your characters, and while you don’t have to “act out” every page, you’ll want to find ways to differentiate them from each other. Is this scene dramatic or fun? Is there a plot twist coming up? Early reads offer chances to make notes guiding you later in the process. Reading the book beforehand helps narrators make much-improved performance choices. I’ve also heard the cautionary tale of a well-known narrator who began regularly going into the booth cold-meaning he didn’t read the book beforehand. I know one who recorded half a book in his natural American dialect before the manuscript mentioned that a main character was Australian. Before performance time, reading the book from beginning to end is a must-even though some narrators try to get around it. Hopefully, these tips will provide would-be narrators a leg up on their competition.
More and more actors and singers are happily getting work in this growing area of performance.
And you don’t necessarily need a “good” voice, like the hypnotic baritone of movie trailer narrators or the velvety lilt of TV show hosts.Ī great sound goes a long way, but even more important is an understanding of story structure and the ability to convey drama or comedic timing. In the meantime, you will probably want to hire a pro.įor professional narrators, opportunities to narrate audiobooks come from a variety of places-from first-time self-published authors to established publishing houses. Thanks to modern technology, it’s entirely possible to record a quality-sounding audiobook in the comfort of your own home-well, closet, really, but that’s another article.
But recording audiobooks is also more portable today. We listen to the audiobooks in the car, on the train, working in the yard-anywhere we can bring our earbuds or headphones.