Writers Tricks of the Trade VOLUME 10 ISSUE 1 | Page 36

McCarron, who read the bestseller
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine , and is
currently one of Audible’s highest-rated
narrators.
Patch McQuaid, who founded iD
Audio 20 years ago and produces
audiobooks
for
big
publishers,
including HarperCollins and Penguin
Random House, says that casting often
comes down to the quality of the voice
itself. “Some people just sound good,”
he says. “They have the right lilt and
cadence, and all that stuff.”
Williams, who graces several top 10
lists of audiobook narrators, is pleased
to hear that her voice has been
described as “lightly graveled”. “Like a
driveway!” she says. “Ironically at
drama school I was told I didn’t have a
voice conducive for radio.”
S HOULD
BOOK ?
YOU ASPIRE TO NARRATE YOUR OWN
At this point if you feel it would be a
kick to narrate your own audiobook, read
on. Unless you are experienced and have
the right voices and accents for your
book, you really should think twice. I once
listened to a book a very popular author
narrated herself. I have up halfway
though. She was really a good writer, but
that talent did not extend to narration.
C ONTINUING FROM THE ARTICLE
Audiobook narration may sound
effortless when you listen to it on
headphones in the park, but sitting in a
booth watching Olivia Dowd read The
Lost Ones by Anita Frank, it suddenly
seems nothing short of extraordinary.
Dowd, who this year played Macbeth in
W INTER 2020
the National Youth Theatre’s gender-
fluid Shakespeare adaptation, shifts
seamlessly from one character to
another, and then back to a more
understated narrative voice, with
barely a mistake in a whole chapter –
she stops only to check the
pronunciation of “antimacassar”. I
notice her text is unannotated. How
does she keep track? “You just sort of
remember: oh, this bit’s coming up,” she
says. “You’re always scanning ahead,
like you might do if you’re skim-
reading.”
That brings up the question: What
does it really take to prepare for and
produce a successful audiobook and how
do the professionals get paid?
Most narrators spend at least as
long in preparation as they will in the
studio: it’s in their interest, because
they get paid per recorded hour. But
not everyone is so conscientious.
McQuaid once got a call from one of his
engineers several days into a session.
“He said, ‘We just got to page 380, and it
mentions the fact that he’s got this
terrible stutter.’ The actor hadn’t read it
[in advance]. Everybody’s got a story
like that.” He’s right: everybody I speak
to does have a story like that: tales in
which Australian or Irish accents
weren’t revealed until the final chapter,
or place names were mispronounced
repeatedly over hundreds of pages. One
mentioned a well-known actor who
turned up to the studio on the first
morning, clapped his hands together
and said, “So! What are we reading
today?”
P AGE 31
W RITERS ’ T RICKS OF THE T RADE