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A Few Thoughts on Narration
I’m on the eleven-hour train ride from New York to Montreal, re-reading a book written for ages 9 and up. It’s about as normal as a day of work gets for someone in my profession, but this particular book terrifies me.
Maybe I should backtrack a little bit: I’m an actor. Specifically, I’m a voice-over actor. I went to school to act, I did years of voice and speech training, and now I lend my voice to commercials, video games, in-house instructional videos for corporations, and audiobooks.
I love audiobooks. I love books, really, audio or otherwise. My reading habits range from pulpy sci-fi to impenetrable novels from the 18th Century.
When I read a book, I like to ask myself questions about what the author thinks of her characters. Or how her characters think and express themselves. For certain authors, a character might be a transparent window into the author’s feelings, or an idealized version of the author. In other cases, the author might set a character at a certain distance, and express a completely different way of thinking about the world. Then there there are deeper, more abstract questions, like what kind of reader the author imagines as she writes, and how she imagines that reader reacting to her characters. Needless to say, it gets a bit complex.
With an audiobook, though, someone’s already answered most of these questions.
An audiobook is one person’s interpretation of a book. It’s the audio narrator’s attempt to answer these questions about character and text. It’s one of the reasons I have the perverse habit of listening to the audio edition of a book I’ve already read. As with all acting, there’s no “right” way to do things, but there are always several “wrong” ways. When I get an audiobook to narrate, I spend as much time as I can thinking about these questions, but this one book has me scratching my head.
A few weeks ago, I got an e-mail from a producer. They have a book for me to narrate. It’s just received a Newbery Honor and they want me to narrate the audiobook. I got excited, as I always do with audiobooks, and the next day I picked up my copy.
The first time I read an assignment through, I make a list of character names and any words that I might not know how to pronounce. These might be foreign words, or maybe even words I’m already familiar with, but maybe I’m not 100% certain how to say because I’ve only ever read them. For instance, a few years ago I did a book about animals, and the word “narwhal” came up. Now, I thought I knew how to pronounce this one, but it turns out I was absolutely wrong. It’s true! We had to stop the recording and check with the research department at the publisher before we could even continue. After that, I’ve always erred on the side of asking about what might be an obvious word, rather than having a recording go out to the world where I’ve made a mistake.
Anyway, on this particular first read-through, I brought pen and paper with me (I never write in books, ever) and knuckled down to read it. It wasn’t a very long book. Short enough to read through in about an hour. My girlfriend and I went to a cafe in our neighborhood in Brooklyn to have a little work date. As I turned each page and jotted down every Russian name I came across, the chocolate croissant I was eating as I read slowly turned into a hard stone in my stomach. The book was tremendous, but it was also enormously unsettling. When I was done, I was in a daze. My girlfriend looked up at me from across the table and said, “Are you done already?” “Yeah,” I said, “this book is a killer.”
I’m supposed to record the book in just a few days, and it’s still giving me the willies. Despite that, I’m going to take every opportunity I have this to read through this book, to get familiar and comfortable with thoughts and ideas which couldn’t be more alien and disturbing to me. After answering these questions, and putting someone else’s words into my mouth, I’ll find myself changed by the experience. And change never comes easy.
Mark Turetsky is a voice over artist based in Brooklyn, NY. His voice can be heard in audiobooks for all ages, including the forthcoming Breaking Stalin’s Nose, by Eugene Yelchin.
Nerdy Book Club 
Mark, I have to admit that I have very mixed feelings about using audiobooks with kids, but have had trouble wrapping my head around why that is. I know some of it lies with the idea of wanting kids to be comfortable with what they can read independently right now, but I know there’s something more. Your thoughts about character interpretation and “somebody has already answered these questions for me” gave me some good food for thought. (And like you, I can’t bring myself to actually write in a book!)
Barb,
On Friday we had parent-teacher conferences. My 5th grader reads at a twelth grade 8 month level. My 4th grader reads at a 9th grade 1 month level. They’re both boys if that matters to you.
We started listening to audiobooks on a drive from Houston to Fort Worth when they were 3 and 5 and they got hooked. Started with Magic Tree House and haven’t looked back.
I truly think that the audiobooks have helped them with their reading. They understand the pleasure that books can bring (which is esp important for my 5th grader as he is more of a geek than the rest of us – and that’s saying something – and reads a LOT of nonfiction esp science books). They have huge vocabularies. They read not only with their ears but also with their eyes. They read a variety of books.
Our biggest problem should be finding them age-appropriate material but they don’t ever seem to run out of something to read.
Anyway, that’s my two cents on audiobooks and kids. And no, two kids with parents present and active in their lives isn’t a valid study but I would actually encourage the struggling readers to listen to more books so that they can fall in love with reading . . .
Well, I don’t really have an opinion on using audiobooks in education (though I really should, considering). But I think it can be a useful supplement, without becoming a substitute for reading. I do know that we end up putting a lot of extra time into audiobooks that will be used in an educational context. For instance, with “adult” books, we usually won’t go back and re-record something like “I quickly went into the room” when the text says “I went quickly into the room,” but for a youth-targeted book, we take a lot of time making sure it’s word perfect. I know that doesn’t really allay your apprehensions, but we really do care. 🙂
So…. what was the book?
What was unsettling about it?
How did you handle this?
Did it affect your narration?
Your post pulled me in, but I feel like there are some pages missing.
I’m glad my post pulled you in. It was very much written in the moment, before I’d really resolved any of those questions, and still had very little notion of how it would affect my narration in the end. As such, it was more a question about process than resolution.
Anyway, the book in question is Breaking Stalin’s Nose. It’s something of a coming of age set in Stalinist Russia, and just about everything about it is unsettling, from the events that happen to the way in which the main character reacts to them.
As an author it is difficult to let someone else make all those interpretations…. But when they do as good a job as Mark does, you can just go along for the ride and enjoy what they’ve done … and maybe even end up seeing your own book in a new light!
It’s interesting to think about what defines “reading”. I was recently in Best Buy to purchase a Kindle Fire for my husband. While talking to the employee helping me, I shared my thought that e-readers of all kinds have probably gotten more people reading. He concurred but then added, “but I mostly listen to audiobooks on mine. I don’t really read
books.” (Of course, I told him, “Yes, you are!). But back to education, it’s interesting that in the new Common Core standards students will comparing interpretations of texts based on their own reading and listening to/viewing a digital version.
Mark, I’m looking forward to your reading of Breaking Stalin’s Nose. I’ve heard a lot about the book so think I’ll try it on audiobook.
I hope I don’t let you down! It’s a fantastic book, though.
Mark, I totally agree with you about the impact that book has! It is a disturbing, but wonderful read and does not allow for reading it and then moving on to something else. The story remains in my thoughts days after reading it…there were so many passages that made me just go back and read it again. Thanks for your time and your concentrated efforts to understand, and interpret the story in preparation for making it an audiobook with great impact!
Mark, your blog was recommended to me by a friend in my writer’s group. I enjoyed hearing about your experience with narrating “Breaking Stalin’s Nose.” I am a writer and a novice voice over artist. I have done narration for videos and public television and am currently recording my first audiobook. Luckily, I have contact with the author and was able to call her about pronunciations, etc. Research has helped me when I couldn’t reach the author but being able to speak directly has been wonderful. I believe it has increased her level of satisfaction with my commitment and desire to keep the audiobook true to her own voice, the one in her head as she wrote her characters and dialogue. As a writer I can tell you that the “voice” of the story goes well beyond the words on the page. I look forward to hearing your finished audiobook. Thanks for the great blog.
Thanks for your feedback!
Contact with the author is always tricky. If it’s something orchestrated by the publisher, then great, but sometimes there are issues which can arise from a narrator contacting an author independently. Usually, there’s no problem, but every once in a while something comes up, so the publishers I work with tend to discourage it just by default.
Best of luck on your audiobook!
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