5 Tips to be a better Audiobook Narrator (from a Pro)

5 tips from a 4-Time Best Performance Nominee, to make your narrations better, your workflow smoother, and give a better …

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well hey there my name is Jay welcome to my booth I work in voice over and I also do quite a bit of audiobook narration so here are five tips from a professional audiobook narrator to take or leave tip number one read the book may seem like a no-brainer to some folks but this is a step that many of us myself included can be guilty of at least wanting to skip and just wanting to get straight into the recording but trust me slow is fast when it comes to audiobook narration that’ll somewhat be a theme for some of these tips here reading the book beforehand sets you up for success in a lot of different ways the most important of which I think is as a Storyteller you want to know the Arc of the story with fiction in particular you want to be able to take the listener on a journey to guide them through certain things if there’s a moment where you can build suspense and sort of build tension as well and then take them around a corner to where something changes that can be really thrilling additionally for character arcs it’s helpful to have at least an idea of where the characters are heading if for example the best friend of the protagonist ends up being the villain at the end of the story or there’s a massive betrayal that’s helpful knowledge to know and work towards in your narration if two characters start off enemies but then end up in a romantic relationship also another example of something that’s thrilling to work with another thing that’s really cool to work into your narrations is if something shows up in chapter one and it’s just kind of there and then in chapter 15 that thing was super important well planting that seed in chapter one then gives you a huge payoff in chapter 15. you can think of it in film if a filmmaker holds the shot on say a cat in the First Act of the film to where the audience is thinking what’s the deal with this cat and then in chapter 15 they’re like that’s what the deal was with the cat I knew something was up with the cat that feeling’s really thrilling and uh as an audiobook narrator you get to give people that which I think is really great it makes you much more viable as a talent from the non-fiction perspective it’s just important to know what points your author is making and to be able to articulate them so if you know what different points in different chapters are being made you kind of have a sense of what’s important to give weight to and what you can kind of let slide um which just comes with time and experience I feel tip number two don’t be afraid to breathe you’re human you and breathing is part of life and with audiobook narrations some people that I’ve either talked to who are starting out get really concerned about their breaths and just being relaxed setting the person up uh that you’re talking to as if you’re sitting next to their bed as close as I am to you the camera right now and just tell the story at this level uh you can think of it as a coffee table or bedside conversation where you don’t need to be overly animated you don’t have to rush you can take your time certain moments can flow quickly and some can kind of you can take your time with them and that just the stretch and pull of that breath is all part of it breath is one of the important parts of your canvas it’s part of what you’re working with uh as a voice over performer all you’ve got are the words you’re saying the silence between them and your breath and your breath is what gives everything emotional weight and the space between it now that isn’t to say that if you find yourself gulping air every couple sentences that means you can just take the pace down move a little bit more slowly and take your time with it and just breathe as you would naturally usually in writing the punctuation points are good point places to take that breath and make sense of the sentence that’s coming up next but in the middle of a thought as we humans speak we’ll take breaks in the middle of a phrase just as we’re thinking as I just did there and so it’s totally fine to take breaks at points that don’t necessarily make sense with the punctuation I think at least tip number three character voices if you’re doing a fiction book and there’s lots of different characters it can be a major major Challenge and super difficult if you’re just starting out to keep them all straight and to keep them all consistent which is very very important so a couple of things that I do to help myself out with that is as I’m recording every time a character Voice pops up or a character speaks for the first time I’ll make a marker of that character speaking in my recording software and label it with their name what that looks like is this if I pull open my software here and zoom in a lot of new characters popped up in this scene for me so I labeled the first time they spoke with their name and that way any time later in the book that that character comes up I can just go back to that marker listen to the what they sound like and refresh my mind and my vocal cords as to how I portrayed them some narrators will make little MP3 files for themselves of each character speaking maybe as they’re reading through the book they’ll make notes maybe this character has a gravelly voice and so I’ll give them a gravelly voice and they’re kind of cocky so Gravelly and they have a cocky disposition I’ll give myself a little MP3 voice memo of that character label it as such so that whenever I’m recording and that character pops up I can listen and then they’re there and I can call on them as as they pop up and then if another character has a different disposition I can make appropriate notes those notes will come up again when you read the book so going back to that step it’s a very very important do not skip it tip number four set yourself a schedule and stick to it once you get the offer for for doing the book the author or the publishing company says hey you’re the one let’s get to work uh ask them when the deadline is or maybe they’ll just tell you straight out straight out of the gate from that deadline you know what you need to do and how quickly you need to work and within that deadline I personally like to give myself a buffer so say the deadline is 14 days from now two weeks I’ll take those 14 days and I’ll give myself four days of wiggle room at the end there so instead of 14 I’ll say I need to finish the book in 10 days this is in case anything comes up in my life a friend stops by I’m having a bad day my voice just won’t behave I’m super tired my performance is lacking another job comes up that I have to squeeze in really quickly I’ve got four days to play with at the end there in case something like that happens so then I’ve got 10 days and say the book is 400 pages long 400 divided by 10 I’ve got to do 40 pages a day I will stick to this schedule give or take 10 pages either way within that 40 page schedule I’ll try and note chapter breaks and the reason why chapter breaks or mid chapter breaks are really really important to consider here is because as a human being your voice changes from hour to hour from day to day from morning to night depending on how much you’ve spoken in recent history to have lit your voice changes a lot depending on when you’re talking so if you take a break mid-sentence at the end of the day and come back the next morning to pick up from where you left off there’s going to be a really sharp shift in your vocal quality which can be jarring to The Listener so I think of them as bookmark places if I was reading a book in my own personal life and there’s a point in the book where a bookmark makes sense to just put in there close the book go to bed for the night or whatever those are maybe good ways to think of where you could stop points where a passage of time makes sense and that way your vocal change the change in your vocal quality won’t be very jarring for The Listener and it just makes you a little bit better of a narrator and tip number five we touched on it a couple times but I think it Bears repeating slow is fast when it comes to audiobooks you don’t want to rush when you’re recording you don’t want to rush your pace of narration if a question comes up say you don’t know how to pronounce a word and it’s popping up a lot ask the author the question on how to pronounce it and uh wait for the response don’t just make something up and keep going take your time slow as fast and all of this is to say because at the end of the day if you make a mistake or make the wrong decision a word comes up say the author invented a country and you don’t know how to pronounce the country you just make a choice and then the author listens to the book and says you pronounce the country wrong and that country pops up a lot you’re gonna have to go back and re-record that whereas instead you could have just asked the author right out of the gate uh actually would you mind sending me an MP3 of how you would say this country’s name and taking it slow saves you a lot of time in the long run on just about every every sense of the word slow is fast so those are five tips on how to have a successful audiobook narration if you’ve got any questions about these or any other questions that may pop up about audiobooks or anything else drop me a line below and I’ll get back to you ASAP until then I’ll catch you in the next one doodles foreign

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