Writers Tricks of the Trade VOLUME 10 ISSUE 1 | Page 37

M AKE NOTES FOR YOUR NARRATOR
I learned through experience that as
the author it is to your benefit to make
any pronunciation notes for your
narrator. Also, if there is anything special
about the voice or diction of a character.
Although one of my audiobooks was well
done, there were some mispronunciations
that I might have been the only one to
notice, but I did notice. I could have sent
the narrator or production company a
note in advance.
S HOULD AN AUTHOR EVER CONSIDER NARRATING
THEIR OWN BOOK ?
Sometimes,
for
reasons
of
authenticity, the best person to narrate
a book is its author, although
authenticity is itself a slippery notion.
Per the Guardian article: Dani Dyer is
the only imaginable narrator for her
book What Would Dani Do? My Guide To
Living Your Best Life, even if she didn’t
actually write it (in the print version,
she thanks the ghostwriter). Generally,
though, the author’s familiarity with the
text is considered a plus – if he/she isn’t
prepared, who is? Unique among
narrators, authors can adjust the text
there and then. “That’s the only person
you need to consult,” says Barrett. “If
you just can’t get ‘necessitous’ out, and
the author’s happy with it, you can go
for ‘needy’.”
I don’t necessarily agree 100% with
that notion. Another very important
factor enters into audiobook narration in
my opinion, even if the author is
extremely familiar with the text. What
kind of a reader is the author and is their
W INTER 2020
voice pleasant to listen to. That doesn’t
mean it can’t have, say a gravelly quality
or particular accent, etc. It does mean the
voice needs to be animated and easy to
listen to for the whole span of a book.
But an untrained reader is a risk and,
in my experience, no one ever asks you if
you might struggle. They find that out
within an hour of you showing up for the
gig. “To be honest, it’s not even an hour
in,” says McQuaid, who shepherded me
through my inaugural narration. “It’s 25
seconds in.” He tells me a story about
John Bird, the founder of The Big Issue
and a highly regarded public speaker. “He
came in to do a short book,” he says. “He
started, and about four lines down – after
he’d done them 10 times – he just put it
down and said, ‘Shall we get some other c-
-t to do this?’”
***
EXCERPTS FROM THE GUARDIAN ARTICLE:
A L ITTLE H ISTORY
The audiobook has a history that
predates even the technology to make it
possible. In The Untold Story Of The
Talking Book, author Matthew Rubery
points out that 19th-century utopian
literature repeatedly described a future in
which books recorded on wax cylinders
would save mankind from the drudgery –
and eyestrain – of reading.
An 1894 article in Scribner’s
magazine, titled The End Of Books,
envisaged
wearable
phonographic
devices with tubes connected to the
listener’s ears, and predicted that
“authors who are not sensitive to vocal
harmonies, or who lack the flexibility of
P AGE 32
W RITERS ’ T RICKS OF THE T RADE