If the
sole priority of each narrator attending APAC this June isn’t to secure
employment, it would interesting to know what is.
Given
that you’ll likely find yourself assuming the schmooze position when
encountering potential employers, a question that arises is, how do you truly
distinguish yourself vocally? What could potential employers possibly hear from
you that hasn’t been proffered in a hundred iterations a thousand times before?
(FYI,
in a wholly unsolicited email Aunt Mary assured me, “I will be there schmoozing
the socks and nylons off publishers with my hot new demo that’s gonna blow the
author’s words off the book!”).
To be
sure, a substantial resume featuring award-winning work for major publishers
couldn’t hurt. It’s fair to say, too, that given economic reality, a facile,
prepared narrator is an attribute worth emphasizing. That said, what’s special
about you? My bet would be that because most narrators are actors or have a
performance background, they’d like to assert that their ability and passion to
tell stories not only distinguishes them, but actually means something to the
listener. The problem is, employers are ahead of you: they get the enthusiasm
and they recognize that the person in front of them isn’t about to discredit
their skill.
So, as
a narrator seeking to pique a potential employer’s curiosity, what to do? You
can always follow AM’s lead: “I’ll be squeezing their cheeks with my pointy
nails screaming, hire me, till they either nod yes or pass out.”
Or how
about an equally unique, albeit more nuanced sell, one that proposes to directly
link your abilities to the listener’s storytelling experience by
‘particularizing’ them through a performance lens.
Let me
explain by first suggesting that, in my opinion, though audio book employers
value great narrators, many may not possess the performance vocabulary to
sustain a conversation about acting, much less storytelling. Hopefully, they
will find a dialogue that seeks to tangibly clarify what you do fascinating,
different. Arresting? I’m getting carried away.
In
contemplating how to initiate your performance schmooze, I’d argue, don’t think
of potential employers as publishers or producers, but rather, listeners.
As a
listener, consider: Where should they be, emotionally, the moment they hear
your voice? What should their experience of you be throughout the audio
program? How might you introduce (respectfully, deferentially, of course)
terminology that assists them in articulating their opinions (hopefully raves)
about your performance? And how should they congratulate themselves for hiring
you in the first place?
Let’s
suppose that you suggest, your demeanor matter-of-fact, breezy, “Ya know, in
fiction and non-fiction, my job-one is to emotionally connect you to the author’s
story so that we are both engaged in the narrative’s action as if it were
happening right now.” I wishfully see the employer taken aback, thoughtful,
contemplative: Ooooh, yeah, that’s like,
so cool. Tell me more.
Well,
assuming he hasn’t been yanked away by a long lost colleague, why not add, as
if momentarily propelled by an inspirational gust, “In fiction, imagine
locating each character’s point of view, feeling it, as if you were inside
their head? When that occurs, I’ve succeeded as a storyteller. I’ve connected
you to the text, emotionally. Oh, and in non-fiction, I expect you to feel
connected to the author’s passion, her point of view, because it’s as if I’m
that passionate author, you can believe that.”
I
envision - inching wondrously toward ‘best case scenario’ - the potential
employer’s tantalized visage as he reconsiders audio books through your
performance lens, thinking to himself, yeah,
this is totally awesome. He’s primed
for the bottom line: what distinguishes the storyteller from Aunt Mary, who is
lurking behind him, fingernails battle ready? “By the way, I’m the author’s
emotional conduit. I connect the feeling embedded in every single word of the
narrative to you. Actors call that feeling subtext. Oh, hey, happy to unpack
the jargon during cocktail hour. Anyway, I know you gotta bounce, but,
remember, connecting emotionally is how I keep you in the garage finishing the
last CD when you should have been in the kitchen chopping the salad, right.”
It’s
never easy to schmooze a potential employer. Few people enjoy selling, even
fewer can tolerate selling themselves. That said, it may be fair to argue that
attempting to create a performance dialogue with an employer – one that
particularizes the narrator’s responsibility to the listener - might introduce
a new and meaningful lens through which the employer can regard the narrator’s
relationship to the listener.
Yes,
the proof is in the storytelling. Ultimately potential employers must be impressed
by the narrator’s work. But I imagine them thinking sometime later, wow, I had
this conversation with a narrator who really gets his craft, knows what he’s
talking about. Yeah, really interesting; Oh, I’ll remember the conversation. And if I hire him it's because he connected me to that book, end of story!”
--
I’ll be
hosting a panel discussion at APAC: Casting the Voice. Check online for update
on panelists.
I'm one of those narrators who hates to schmooze, simply because I'm not very good at it. My original strategy was to machine-gun fire my demo CDs across the room like so many frisbies. I think I like your way better.
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