As you can see in the above picture, narrating Audiobooks isn't exactly glamorous work, but, that's sort of the fun of it, too. You can show up to work looking like this, and nobody really gives a damn.
But.
How does one go about becoming an Audiobook Narrator? What does it "take" to do it? How does one "get started"?
I assume, like so many things in theacting world, everybody has their own path, but this is how it happened for me:
I started acting, like many, at a very early age. Nine, to be exact. I started, again like many, in theatre, mainly musical, but with a good amount of stage movement, improv, even mime training thrown in for good, artistic measure. I loved it. I was captivated by the world of the Theatre, with all its craziness, pretension, and grand storytelling. Still am, actually. I love the down-and-dirty little theatres all the way to the giant monolithic touring shows with their pageantry, spectacle and loud-as-hell faux rock-pop modern musical scores. And, I still do theatre, every now and then. When I'm not in a recording booth.
You see, it was some time in my late-twenties that I discovered that I had a proficiency for doing Voiceover. I discovered this in a relatively unconventional way, namely dubbing Japanese Cartoons into English. I actually did this for about ten years before realizing, "Hey! You're good at this voiceover 'stuff', how about you actually go out there and WORK IT?!"
And so I did. I landed a great agent, and told her, in no uncertain terms, that I wished to be a fully and gainfully employed VO Talent, voicing anything and everything, from commercials to audiobooks, and all sorts of things in between. And that is precisely what went on to happen. The Audiobook nut, however, was maybe the hardest to crack, or at least if felt that way, because I wanted it the most.
Since childhood, I had had a habit of lugging out one of those old skool, 1980s Tape Recorders, hitting rec/play, and reading into the huge, bulky thing, to hear later what I sounded like telling the story. It was fun. It "did something" for me. I enjoyed telling the story, and I suppose that is what acting is all about at its root anyway, telling a story. And, finally, in my mid-30s, that's what I was doing, in, arguably, its purest form. I was, and am, getting paid to tell a story. But, of course, this is where I must iterate with great weight that doing this kind of work is not"getting paid to read a book" or "getting paid to talk". Far from it. What you're getting paid to do is sit in a small booth, usually with an engineer and director listening in on you, for hours on end, with large pages spread before you, and a microphone in your face, and headphones on your ears, as you perform a story and weave it into digital media for people's listening pleasure. This means now only having an interesting, pleasant, sexy, sultry, or soothing voice, but actually being able to narrate in a way that engages people, rather than makes them want to tune you out or, worse, simply fall asleep. Further, it means being able to bring to life, realistically, any character that comes along in the story. And yes, that can include anybody from an aging female streetwalker, to a twelve-year-old middle eastern kid with an attitude, and any other permutation you can imagine.
As an example of the kinds of character-curve balls you can be thrown as a narrator, I only have to think back to about three days ago, when I was in the midst of narrating this sweeping Sci-Fi epic, in which I had to voice:
An Aussie, an Eastern Bloc boy, an African American girl, a Scottish girl, and a host of Americans, ranging from Texas to the Midwest in their origin...on top of all this, these were kids, and I had to voice them as children, teens, and finally adults, and even senior citizens over the course of the book. And, really, that only covers about half of the book's characters. So, you can see how not only your vocal range, but your wits, are put to the test, in narrating a challenging book.
"Okay okay!" I hear you exclaiming, "But how did you get into it?!"
Right.
Well, okay, once I had decided that commercials, elearning, narration, audiobooks and such were the way I wanted to go, I let my agent handle all the other aforementioned genres except audiobooks. I wanted to pursue that on my own. So, first, I had an Audio Book demo made. Yeah, that's right, I simply chose passages from about four different books, all varied, and read them as close to perfectly as I could manage, and had an ace engineer produce it for me ( the whole business of finding the right studio, engineer, etc. is a Hub unto itself which I'll address later ). I took this demo, or rather, downloaded the mp3, and started sending it in emails with cover letters, to companies I knew I wanted to work for: such as Blackstone Audio, Brilliance Audio, and Bee Audio... hm, lots of Bs there, interesting. Anyway, after a few months of doing this, I got a bite, and the wonderful people at Brilliance Audio told me they wanted me to come do a very quick Young Adult novel as sort of a paid audition. I did, and to beat a cliche to death, the rest is history. Since that happened, about seven months ago, I've now voiced six audiobooks, and am about to embark on my seventh and eighth.
That's how I did it, but you have to decide for yourself how you'll do it.
Let me leave you with these final tips,though, should you be chosen as a narrator for an Audiobook release:
- if you don't already, start drinking at least 32-64 oz. of water a day
- if you smoke, stop. if you don't, don't start
- limit caffeine intake
- limit alcohol intake
- get rest
- don't do anything stupid with your voice, especially oh, say, going to a concert the night before your first recording session
- take direction
- BE PATIENT
That's it for now, I'll def. be back with more Hubs soon, on Acting, Voice Acting, and MUCH more.
love/will/liberation,
-Chris
being interviewed about Voieover
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