on the flipside you narrators are my rock stars!! I am blind and I have been reading audiobooks for over 10 years. Sometimes this is the only way to explore life outside of vision! Love you guys and appreciate all you do more than you know!
Celine, I am just starting out as a narrator. I have a lot to learn and I am watching these videos to pick up tips and to get inspiration. Your comment just inspired me far more than anything I have learned yet. Thank you for your encouraging words!
I've read, watched, and listened to a lot, and I do mean a lot, of resources on performing Voice Over and this short video on Voice Acting for Audiobooks is one of the best!!! When providing tips and recommendations, these pros get right to the point with Dos and Don'ts, and they All emphasize the critical importance of knowing what the book listener is expecting, along with remembering what the book author had in mind. Thank you so, so much for Sharing this!
Omg..Scott is one of my fav readers, but does NOT look like my mind's picture!! It was especially like that with RC Bray!! Actually😁..it's the same with a lot of narrators ,they create so many different 'faces' when reading..I do not watch TV, I listen to, probably, 6 audiobooks a week, depending on length of course..so I do love me a good narrator(..and exclamation marks it seems..)!!
Aiden Snow narrates the Callaghan series by Annie Zanders - ALL the voices. Seven brothers, their father, a close friend and ALL their SO's. Every voice is distinct and the drama Aiden injects is perfect. He has made an excellent series great. Ive listened to all 8 books at least 3 times.
When I ran out of favorite authors to listen to, I picked unknown authors by which audiobooks were narrated by Scott Brick. First time I ever saw his face. NOT what I imagined.
I love listening to Scott. The Ron Chernow’s books on Hamilton and Washington were my first experiences with audiobooks. The fiction audio books have been disappointing, but am enjoying Scott’s reading of In Cold Blood. I guess I read both male and female in my own voice in my head so like the subtle differentiation he gives to his characters.
I’m listening to Scott read Chernow’s Washington (Hamilton is next) now, and his voice combined with Chernow’s conversational style of writing is sheer perfection. Loving every second of it.
One thing I would like to highlight as a listener and as an aspiring narrator is that when a narrator does an opposite sex voice for a character in one book and then uses the same one in another book, it creates a problem. This problem is that the first time I hear that narrator do the voice, I will always associate that voice with the first character. When I hear the voice in a different book, it brings to mind the character in the first book. Here is my example. I first heard R.C. Bray do a female voice of a character named Collie in one of Keith C. Blackmore's Mountain Man books ( Book 3, Well Fed to be precise ). I later listened to another book narrated by R.C. Bray and he used the "Collie" voice and it immediately brought to my mind everything about the character from the other book and it caused confusion, rejection of the character as I liked Collie, and I don't even remember the series or name of the second book. On the flip side, I have listened to narrators who do what is suggested in this video and never had "character rejection" occur. I am a man with a very deep voice and I have struggled with deciding to do narration because I just can't sound like a woman or at least a woman anyone would want to listen to. I have even experimented with Audacity filters to try and artificially sound more female - it didn't go well. The advice given in this video is very encouraging and the example I pointed out was to show how it resonated with me.
I wish they were live right now lol, I wanna ask how they deal with reading something that's inspiring a huge emotion in them? For example, a scene that's making you cry.
For a gold medal example of how to differentiate voices, listen to John LeCarre's The Honourable Schoolboy, narrated by Michael Jayston. I lost track of how many characters there are, and he gives each of them a distinctive voice.
As a copy editor, a huge pet peeve for me is using actions as dialog tags. Shrugged, smiled, grinned, laughed, etc. are NOT dialog tags. This is where the narrators' practice of ignoring punctuation comes in handy.
I was told my entire life that I have an amazing voice. I honestly don't hear anything special about it, but I came across audio book Is narrator careers and I'm VERY interested.
Great video. 8:28: I wouldn't say a narrator is "breaking the rules" but instead is editing the author (which should have been done before the book was published, but we all make mistakes). It is obviously correct that it should be: "I'll have one of those." Branford grinned. Full stop after the quote b/c, as was explained, we don't grin sentences, we say them. It's a common mistake w/beginning writers. I say this as an editor and writing instructor. Thanks!
Here's a question I'm struggling with: Does the passage from the back cover of my printed book belong anywhere in the audiobook such as the opening credits? I can't seem to find an answer despite all of the Googling I've done. Any advice is appreciated!
And see, I appreciate the different voices and solid narration, but I would much rather hear just the facts than I would listen to a “performance.” Just my preference
One of my favorite books of my younger years was LORD FOUL’S BANE by Stephen Donaldson. I found an audio version read by Scott Brick, His narration was so off-putting, I couldn’t listen to the book after only a few chapters in. Perhaps it was because I knew the book too well, but I could not imagine that Brick was reading the voice in Donaldson’s head when he wrote it. The main character is Thomas Covenant. Scott made him angry in every exchange. Covenant WAS angry from time to time, but not consistently. That experience has made me forever skeptical of Scott Brick as a narrator. His reading was just too affected to take seriously. So, I’m not sure I’d take much of his advice to heart.
There are some female narrators who can create real male voices (like Andrea Parsneau). But I've never heard a male narrator who can provide real female voices. They can only make believable femalish voices.
Just came by to say I'm listening to Frank Herbert's "The White Plague," and Scott Brick is cloying me to death. He's in love with himself and the 'skillful cadential and tonal variation' is unrelated to the content, results in mind numbing repetition, repetition, repetition.
Imagine the most annoying silent film actor with their absurdly dramatic and over the top body language. Now add the most patronizing and sarcastically smarmy voice imaginable reading a book in a set formula pattern, over and over and over and over again. Ladies & gentlemen, I give you Scott Brick. His narration is the equivalent to 6 hours of listening to someone dry heave over a toilet.
