Feature
The Art & Craft of Narration
How do the pros define what they do? How do they prepare? What helps draw the listener in? Veteran producers and narrators tell all.
By Esther Tolkoff
With the exponential growth in the number of audiobook titles and listeners over the past 10 years, audiobook narration is finally coming into the limelight—both as an artistic endeavor and as a source of paying work. As more performers, authors, and celebrity narrators get into the act, AUDIOFILE decided to ask top people who work in the field how they approach narration, why it is different from acting for stage or screen, what experienced narrators teach would-be narrators, and the many ways narrators consciously seek to grab a listener’s attention and keep it.
THE NARRATORS: Creating “perpetual immediacy”
Many of audiobooks’ best-known and most experienced narrators come from the theater, yet all say that narration has unique challenges and is very different from working onstage. “You have to convey each character’s range of emotionality and also maintain an ‘informational’ narrative voice,” explains actor George Guidall, who boasts a 40-year theatrical career and has recorded over 800 unabridged novels, ranging from the classics (THE ILIAD, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT) to bestsellers. Guidall, who narrates regularly for Recorded Books, says “For audiobooks, you’re changing a written art form into a spoken art form. That vocal art form demands much more energy than when you’re onstage with other actors because you’re creating a picture—an imagined truth—using your voice alone with no visual help.”
“Perpetual immediacy” is one of the ways Barbara Rosenblat describes the effect she aims for. Rosenblat has performed in both New York and London theater and has narrated over 400 books, including popular mystery series by Elizabeth Peters and Nevada Barr and featuring such characters as Amelia Peabody and Anna Pigeon, among many others, and her Audie-winning performance of BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY. Last summer she taught a master class at Verberations, a New York City recording studio that offers actors and businesspeople training in many aspects of voice work. The class was tailored to actors hoping to become narrators. She told her students to ask themselves, “ ‘Why would anyone want to listen? Where is the magic?’ That magic comes from your choices—from what you communicate using only your voice as you sit in a booth with a microphone. You have to create a sense of closeness—like when someone read a story to you when you were a child—and make it seem that everything you’re conveying is a live event happening right now.”
Stage and screen actor Jay O. Sanders, who has recorded some 50 audiobooks for top commercial publishers—most recently EVERYTHING’S EVENTUAL by Stephen King—says that in most plays and films, actors are responsible for one role, although occasionally they may “double,” and that’s it. “But as a narrator,” says Sanders, “you’re carrying the entire story. You’re responsible for the balance and for focusing on becoming a number a characters while switching back to the narrative role and providing information.” Audiobook narration, he adds, “is sort of like a gymnasium for actors.”
And today, more and more actors want to get in shape to do it. Narration classes are being held in the major acting centers of New York, London, and California—and in workshops elsewhere. Narrator/producer Patrick Fraley teaches other actors to narrate in his workshop “Books-on-Audio Checklist,” which he has given at Voicetrax, a training academy in San Francisco. He has prepared a curriculum, “The Billion Dollar Read,” that he also teaches at the Actors’ Connection in New York (as a guest of instructor Marla Kirbin) and on his own in Los Angeles.
Fraley observes that actors seek to become narrators because they find that the genre allows them to keep their acting skills in shape and, in fact, to grow by doing a greater range of characters than they are usually cast for on stage or screen. And with the tremendous growth in audiobooks, says Fraley, “they see this area as another place to ply their trade, to earn a living.”
Since 1984, actor Joe Mantegna has made a point of reading audiobooks in between his film commitments. “I do about four of them a year,” he says. Mantegna has read most of Mario Puzo’s books and regularly reads books in Robert Parker’s Spenser series, most recently Pot Shot. “I thought it would be easy the first time I did this,” Mantegna observes. “You don’t have to memorize lines, and it seems like there’d be less preparation, but that’s not so. It’s an acquired skill. You soon learn that in the studio, if you read a few lines and happen to say ‘uh,’ it’s ‘Let’s take that again.’ Soon you realize how much work it is and how dead-on you have to be for hours at a time. I know excellent actors who did one audiobook and never did another because they found it so difficult.”
Mantegna enjoys books and the opportunity to portray varied characters. “All of performing is storytelling, and this is storytelling in its purest form,” Mantegna comments. While he did not plan it, his audiobook work has helped his career in other ways. “I’ve been the voice of Mercedes-Benz for several years. They’d heard my reading and approached me. I had a role in THE LAST DON, and because I’d read the audiobook, I already knew the characters well.”
Patrick Fraley reminds his students right up front that audiobook listening is often a “secondary activity”—people drive, exercise, cook, or do any number of things while they listen. To compete for the listeners’ attention, he says, would-be narrators—even those experienced in voiceovers or announcing—need to increase their vocal range and emotional expressiveness.
Even for experienced actors, this takes practice. Los Angeles actor/writer Scott Brick, a self-taught narrator, says the first time he heard his own voice on audio, he was horrified. He had recorded one of his own short stories in order to help with the editing process. “I couldn’t stand the way I sounded,” he laughs. To improve his skill, he began to read into a tape recorder on a regular basis. After persistently inquiring, he landed a narrator role at Dove Audio reading CHAINS OF COMMAND by William J. Caunitz and was called back for more. Over the past three years, Brick has recorded UP COUNTRY by Nelson Demille, MYSTIC RIVER by Dennis Lehane, and the newest Tom Clancy, RED RABBIT, for major publishers while continuing to work in film and theater.
TRICKS OF THE TRADE: From casting choice to preparation
Sherry Huber, who is vice president and executive producer and director of Random House Audio Publishing, says that in general she listens for narrators “who can’t see the end of the sentence,” meaning they anticipate and lead the listener along. “You never know where a good actor will go next,” says Huber. “They know how to maintain a surprise element.”
Publishers and producers have to think not only of a narrator’s skill but also of how to marry a voice to the audiobook’s subject matter and format—abridged or unabridged—and to think of the book’s natural market. Sometimes, these considerations may lead a publisher to want a celebrity reader or an author as narrator—as with two celebrated and widely praised releases: Jeremy Irons reading LOLITA and Fanny Flagg reading her recent novel STANDING IN THE RAINBOW. Nevertheless, Robert Allen, president and publisher of Random House Audio, says that veteran narrators “remain our bread and butter” for most books.
When choosing actors for particular projects, Huber likes to think of “the book itself as a person with a personality of its own”—not a collection of characters within the book. Her gut will tell her that certain readers are just right for a given book, she says. Producer John McElroy agrees that “casting is instinct,” and every casting process is different. Like Huber, he looks for “a connectivity” between an artist and a particular book. And he’s never found a good audiobook narrator who wasn’t also an avid reader. “These are people who have a natural feeling for words and what they are expressing.”
As for celebrity readers and authors, Huber says that the notion they can’t read audiobooks well is not necessarily true: “Some can read their own works very well. Others can’t.” Even some experienced actors find it difficult to read without the feedback of a literal audience, so it’s not surprising that new readers may not get the hang of it and feel lost without the ability to use physical expressions and gestures. Some find they do not have the endurance to read expressively for hours. However, others do very well. Producer-director Paul Ruben points to Oliver Wyman’s first reading of IT’S NOT ABOUT THE BIKE and Stephen Spinella’s debut, reading BLACKWOOD FARM, as examples of actors whose talent as narrators shone through on their first try.
Actors prepare carefully for narration, they say, though they often don’t have much time. Jay Sanders notes that abridgment scripts or book galleys usually arrive about a week before a recording session, though sometimes he’s expected to bone up more quickly. “I read the script, make my choices, and do my homework.” This may include looking up pronunciations of unusual words. “I make lists as I read,” says Barbara Rosenblat, and usually these words are checked by the producer-director. Recorded Books has a research department, for instance, and often gives narrators a list of difficult words—place names, specialized or foreign words, etc.—to prepare them in advance.
THE RECORDING STUDIO: Where it all comes together
Narrators have to make a major imaginative leap: Keep a sense of performance alive while sitting alone in a recording booth. How do they do it? “Before you begin reading,” Rosenblat says, “you talk to the director (who is often also the producer) about his or her vision of the book. Most of the time if they know you have the chops, they’ll leave you pretty much alone.” Directors or producers may seek to influence the performance when the narrator is at the studio. “Some are very involved,” says Sanders, “and others leave it to you. Sometimes you disagree about an interpretation and have to talk it out.”
Producer-director Paul Ruben says he gives the same notes to experienced narrators as he does to beginners. “The difference is that the veterans and the ‘naturals’ instinctively know how to go into a storytelling persona. I find there are two kinds of directions I give—organic and technical. The organic has to do with talking over who the characters are, what they want, where the story is going. Again, some people need very little such guidance. Newcomers may need more.”
McElroy finds that pacing is a key area to work on with many readers. And Scott Brick remembers producer-director John Runnette advising him that “Just when an action scene seems to be building up to roller coaster speed, that’s the moment to slow down. It seems to go against every instinct. but when I heard it played back, I realized it works. Slowing down sustains the suspense.”
And, of course, narrators must differentiate their characters. Ruben notes that many men tend to try to portray women by simply pitching their voices higher. “It isn’t realistic,” Ruben says. “I point out that using a stage whisper is often a more successful technique in getting across to the listener that the storyteller is conveying a female character.” As Rosenblat told her master class last summer, “Each character must be recognizable, but subtlety, subtlety, subtlety in your shifts or you’ll sound like a cartoon.” Rosenblat says she reserves heavy regional accents for secondary characters, “to add a bit of color.” Distractions must be avoided. She notes that the slightest noise (rustling papers, breathing) is distracting. So are mispronunciations. “So do your homework. The minute you make a listener stop and wonder what he heard, you break the illusion.”
A narrator must keep all this in mind during long hours in the recording studio. Scott Brick has found his prior work as a Shakespearean actor was useful in developing endurance. In recording UP COUNTRY, a 1,100-page book, he read for 8 hours a day for 10 days in a row. Brick has found that the standard voice training theatrical actors undertake—breathing from the diaphragm—was readily transferable to audiobook work. “Sometimes if I know I’m going to be doing a particularly heavy amount of reading—long hours day after day—I will take extra precautions in caring for my voice.” These include drinking hot tea and sucking on zinc lozenges. Because every book is different, say the narrators, so is every narrating experience.
In any audiobook recording session, the producer-director and engineer are also paying close attention. They listen for pronunciation errors or unwanted noises and follow along to be certain the text is being read accurately. Rosenblat says she also looks to the producer-director and the engineer for immediate feedback. “I like to sense a reaction, even if it’s an audience of two people. After all, in the end my audience will only be one person at a time anyway—the listener.”
Rosenblat notes that “bookmarking”—a technical step in which today’s digital equipment allows an engineer to bring up and play a particular take—allows a performer to listen to exactly how he or she may have portrayed a given character’s voice at an earlier session, making it easier to pick up the same intonation, so that the voices produced during two different days’ readings match. After the recording sessions are over, Paul Ruben explains, “the editor cuts out takes that won’t be used, unnecessary pauses or extraneous sounds. The producer listens to the book afterwards to be certain this was taken care of properly.”
A narrator’s skill, a producer’s choice, preparation and attention to detail, focus in the studio, and quality control in production—all together, these make up the art and craft of narration. Happily, for the listener, it all comes down to a story and a voice.
[To read more about audiobook narrators, see the December/January issue of AudioFile. Subscribe Now! ]
December 2005/January 2006
(c)2005 AudioFile Publications, Inc.
