A few things to know about Narrating Audio books.
one of my favourite stories I have narrated this year.
One thing I’ll say about being a voice actor, is that you NEVER stop learning. Perhaps it’s like all jobs, especially creative ones, if you think you know it all, maybe it’s time to start something new!
I only started narrating Audio books in 2019, since then, I have had the joy of bringing 16 books to life, 14 of them you can hear.. here!
But each time I learn something new, and consolidate what I have done before, and I wanted to share some of those, if you’ve wondered about how to approach reading audio books.
if you have time before the scheduled record, read the whole book through before you start, if not, read as much as you can, so you’re comfortable there aren’t any major surprises!
find your narrator voice, make it easy to maintain over a long period (I mean hours and hours of reading) so it’s probably close to your own voice.
if it’s a novel, think about where the book is set, and how that effects the voices of the characters, and the way you read the story, the pace, tone, what do you feel?
if there are characters, what are their voices going to be? Are they male or female, are they young, old, from the city or the country, what about them informs the voice you will choose? Do they have an accent? What are the clues in the story?
make sure any words or names you’re not sure of you do some research to work out, if you can ask the author, even better!
reading aloud is really different to reading to yourself. Even if you’ve read the whole book to yourself there will be words that are tricky to say together, sentences that trip you up and things you made sense of in your head before you read it out loud.
have a break every hour.
Telling someone else’s story is a wonderful challenge and responsibility, and a bit like running a marathon, but with the growth and enjoyment of audio books world wide, it’s definitely an area worth getting your head around!
Happy Voicing!
Cecelia :)
