Not For Librarians Only: An Audio Book Reviewer’s Template

If we want criticism to matter…we have to treat it with

more respect. This means abandoning the notion that it’s

just hack work or service journalism or literary

bookkeeping… criticism, done well, is…a singular genre in

which a lot of great writers have done their best work.

            -Sam Anderson, “Why Criticism Matters”

New York Times Sunday Book Review, Dec. 31, 2010

TEMPLATE (Online Miriam Webster): a gauge, pattern, or mold …used as a guide to the form of a piece being made.

STORYTELLING: A co-creative experience involving the senses with an intentional storyteller and acknowledged listener

            -Rachel Hedman, Professional storyteller

I begin by acknowledging that most audio book reviewers are not compensated, or paid little for their services. Their listening commitment (a 15 hour book is 15 hours) and the time required to conscientiously assess a program is significant.

In recognition of the reviewer’s serious labor (of love, mostly), I hope the following template will add credibly to the proposition that audio book narration - whose roots burrow powerfully through a time-honored and singularly distinctive storytelling tradition that probably dates back to humanity’s nascent guttural utterances – is eminently worthy of the reviewer’s effort to unpack this performance art for the listener.

By the way, narrators and audio book professionals do read reviews and do take them seriously, especially when they’re favorable. That’s a fact!

REVIEWER’S TEMPLATE FEATURES:

PERFORMANCE MARKERS: Critique vocabulary that identifies specific performance issues directly related to the listener’s experience.

 

LISTENING LINK: Audio book segments that - in the best sense - epitomize performance markers.

EVALUATION QUESTIONS: Highlighted in boldface, salient critique questions reviewers might pose to themselves while evaluating performance.

        

THE SINGULARITY OF STORYTELLING

Before identifying vocabulary (what I’m calling ‘performance markers’) that specifically addresses the efficacy of a given performance, it’s important to remember that this template separates experience of the written word from the spoken word, the implication being that there’s something special about ‘spoken’ storytelling. While automobiles and their standard cassette players may have been the progenitor of audio books, there is, nevertheless, something wholly unique about speech, something the storyteller can conjure that the writer cannot. It’s what that most incredible instrument of all - the human voice - can perpetrate on a listener that I’m drilling into when I serve up this so-called performance vocabulary.

In a word, this template is dedicated to the singularity of the narrator’s performance art: storytelling.

PREPPING THE REVIEWER’S LENS

As you prepare to evaluate an audio book, take a metaphorical breath, as if to allow yourself time to position the critic’s lens to properly see the storyteller’s aesthetic purpose: To act as a conduit that connects the text’s emotional intent to the listener. That is the performer’s bottom line obligation.

Said differently: Whatever the main character Joe is experiencing emotionally – whether he’s evil incarnate or Mr. Lovable - the narrator (conduit) must connect Joe (his feelings) to the listener, precisely as the author intends.

FASTENING THE REVIEWER’S EARS

The reviewer’s ears separate performance from text. Love the book or hate it, conflating text and narrator disregards the storyteller’s only obligation: emotionally connecting you to the story. A performance review focuses on the transport of the narrative’s feelings and perhaps, depending on the text, a little pity for the narrator who is at the words’ mercy.

REVIEWING EMOTION

         Axiomatically, if actors can only act emotions, shouldn’t emotions be the reviewer’s primary focus.

If a reviewer writes, “I liked Cindy’s performance,” or “the narrator’s characterizations were great,” we might fairly ask, how does ‘like’ inform us about Cindy’s emotional impact on the listener? It kind of does, but kind of not, too. “The narrator’s portrayal of tough-minded Cindy was good, straight-forward, precise,” doesn’t quite reference how we might actually feel when hearing Cindy.

Again, actors act emotion. That’s it. If I’m directing an actor and say, okay, this character, Cindy, she grew up in poverty, so what does that tell you emotionally about Cindy? Nothing.

 Poverty isn’t an emotion; it’s not actable. Therefore, mentioning Cindy’s poverty isn’t an actable clue to the storyteller. But, when I suggest that Cindy’s poverty has made her strong-willed, suspicious of wealthy people who never knew what being poor meant, now the actor gets Cindy emotionally. These are actable clues that encourage the narrator to inhabit Cindy’s feelings, then connect those feelings to the listener.

An emotionally-centric review might alert us to “…Cindy’s  forceful, yet tempered tone…The town’s arrogant mayor, whose patronizing opposition to Cindy’s implacable demands to help the poor pushes us to dislike him as though he were the object of our scorn.” This more evocative syntax suggests to the listener, here’s how you’re going to feel about these characters.

ASTERISKS

* If you’re an exception-to-the-rule person, please know that attached to the following performance markers is an imaginary asterisk. My vocabulary is not fixed. It’s meant to be mediated.

* The accompanying performance links are my opinion, yours may differ. That’s what makes awards ceremonies maddening.

THE TEMPLATE

Note: The following guidelines apply to fiction and non-fiction.

PERFORMANCE MARKER: Chewing the syntax

        

LISTENING LINK: Listen to Simon Jones.

Is there an abandoned, unloved word, let alone phrase?

Imagine an author slaving over his narrative, saying to himself, well, I’ll just heave in some sentences that really don’t matter to me.

         Not likely.

         The reviewer should rightfully imagine the storyteller - as she contemplates six grueling days in the studio plowing through a 23 finished hour marathon – silently ingratiating herself to the author: ‘Yeah, your words, I know. I know, all 216,000 of ‘em. Your babies. Well, for the next week, they’re mine!’

         Contemplating the author’s narrative, storytellers recognize that there’s no such thing as a word or phrase undeserving of their total emotional commitment.

         Readers languidly gum the language, storytellers chew it, intensely.

PERFORMANCE MARKER: The here and now

LISTENING LINK: Listen to Maggie-Meg Reed

and Barbara Caruso.

Are these storytellers in the moment, experiencing what’s occurring as if it were happening in the here and now?

Or do they sound removed, uninvolved, as if reporting an unfelt event or a time whose palpitating resonance they can longer recall, much less replicate?

         When the storyteller inhabits this marker, it’s a performance maker. Ignore the here and now, or worse, defy it, it’s a performance breaker.

Why?

Without the here and now there’s no emotional consequence, no storytelling. At best, you’ll get a well enunciated, bland reading. In the absence of the here and now, listeners may understand everything, but they’ll feel nothing about it.

         Storytellers evoke the here and now when they emotionally engage the text as if events were unfolding in front of them right now, even if they’re talking about the invention of the wheel. Storytellers experience the words’ feeling, existentially, in real time. Regardless of topic, location, or who is speaking, if the storyteller is immersed in the here and now, the listener will be as well.

         Narrators who disregard the here and now tend to ‘report’ experience. Reporting, as I call it, is emotionally empty, non-committal, passive, as if proffered by a marvelous body (great voice) with no soul (feelings).

Think of it this way: a reporter’s job one is the objective dissemination of information, one-eighty opposite the storyteller’s prime directive, emotional connection.

Next time you hear the TV news broadcaster’s honeyed rhythms, authoritative cadences or the commercial voice-over talent’s clear, buttery-smooth voice, mellifluously uttered, meticulously modulated words, it’s worth noting their outcome: Dispassionate reportage; encouragement of the purchase of a product or service. But never to connect themselves to you emotionally, as if they were an integral part of the story.

Reportage is anathema to storytelling because it emotionally distances narrator and listener. The here and now actualizes the moment. It immerses narrator and listener in events as if they’re occurring in real time. If the goal is transfer of information, hire a reporter or announcer.

        

PERFORMANCE MARKER: Point of view

LISTENING LINK: Listen to Holter Graham

and Beth McDonald.

Is the story unfolding as if these narrators were the characters they’re talking about?

Or, do the narrators act merely as if they’re the characters’ spokesperson? Or maybe the narrators are speaking as themselves, for themselves, as if their finely tuned vocal instrument should be the story’s focus rather than its characters?

Storytelling cannot exist unless narrators speak from the point of view of who or what they’re speaking about.

Point of view can only be revealed when the narrator speaks, not as the character (that’s what the actual dialogue is for), not for the character (implying the performer is the narrative’s focus), but rather as if the narrator has permeated their soul for the purpose of intimately transmitting the character’s feelings to the listener. 

         Think of a story about a man who hates his wife. As a listener, would you prefer to hear an omniscient voice announce the story from his emotionally unattached vantage or be thrust by the storyteller into the marrow of this hateful husband’s bones, feeling suddenly provoked by the woman he detests? When point of view vanishes, so does emotional connection.

It’s challenging enough for narrators to consistently maintain the point of view of whom they’re speaking of. What about inanimate objects and non-sentient beings?

LISTENING LINK: Listen to Barbara Rosenblat breathe feeling into mostly things.

PERFORMANCE MARKER: Discovery (playing the ‘wow’)

LISTENING LINK: Listen to David Ledoux.

Does his cadence reflect someone who, just before he utters the next word, suddenly discovered it? As if he has no idea of what he’s going to say until the syntax erupts from his lips?

Or are David’s words perfunctorily expelled, quickly, as if uninterrupted by preceding thought? Does he blow through punctuation, reading what sounds like a 300 page run-on sentence Gatling gun style?

Discovery is literally the conscious thought that occurs the very moment before the syntax that expresses it. Discovery is an emotional propellant that turbocharges listeners’ willing suspension of disbelief, immersing them, magically, in the here and now. To the storyteller, discovery translates as: Wow!

 I’ll explain:

Discovery is a counterintuitive process because the narrator is  reading what should sound extemporaneous. Because the book is in front of her, she knows what’s coming.

The narrator’s discovery challenge exemplifies one of storytelling’s ironic truths: listeners are aesthetically defaulted to want to willingly suspend their disbelief, to believe that what’s being read is actually occurring in the moment.

Because narrative fiction and non-fiction connect us with our experience of ourselves and others, isn’t sharing in the active discovery of the feelings that emotionally represent that experience a lot more exciting than being treated to a recitation by some bored reader for whom there are no emotional stakes.

Or think of it this way: in real life discourse, do we literally know what’s coming next? Don’t we routinely stop/start, stutter, pause, mumble, hesitate when we speak. So, why wouldn’t the narrator do the same?

I often tell narrators that discovery oscillates in the white spaces between punctuation (a comma, period, colon, etc.). That white space is where the author readies us for a new thought – from subtle to profound - which is always joined at the hip with attendant feeling. When the storyteller discovers this white space, it’s as if to say: Wow! Wait till you hear this!

        

PERFORMANCE MARKER: Emphasis

LISTENING LINK: Listen to Oliver Wyman.

As he describes this couple’s passion, is it as if the words he’s emphasizing emerge from his discovery of their intimate relationship?

Or is he arbitrarily modulating (‘punching,’ ‘vocally highlighting,’ almost ‘singing’ words or phrases) in an effort to percolate his narration, juice it with inflection? Simply, does his emphasis sound real or fake, organic (natural) or modulated (forced)?

         Axiomatically, real (organic) connects; fake (manufactured) disconnects.

         Ironically, emphasis is as much the storyteller’s enemy as her friend. The harder the narrator works at ‘hitting’ the right words, the more boring (or annoying) she becomes. Why? Because modulation disconnects us from feeling. Emphasis for its own sake invalidates emotion. Manufactured inflection asserts emphasis over empathy. Modulation – purposefully whacking a word for variety sake or because it somehow begs to be EMPH-a-sized - is the moral equivalent of gorging on a lusciously gooey hot fudge sundae: tastes great but try surviving off those calories.

         When directing narrators, if I detect manufactured inflections that indicate feeling, I’ll often suggest to the narrator: Don’t sing, don’t modulate. Inhabit the feeling inside the word and emphasis will occur, naturally, organically.

         To sample what I’ll suggest is empty calorie emphasis (again, only as it pertains to storytelling) listen to a radio or TV voice-over, or news broadcaster: their job is to interest or inform only. If you happen to ride the New York City transit, listen to Charlie Pellett, ubiquitous voice of the newest subway cars. His mother of all empty calorie announcements - a vocal aria that regards words as manic action figures - bounce sung syntax up, down, high, low, as if each were on its own trampoline. And why not! His job is to inform passengers, alert them about any “suspicious package,” not freak the daylights out of them, cause mass panic, or insinuate his feelings into the content of his communication.

         Modulation mocks feeling. You’ll know empty emphasis when you hear it because its emotional impact will be like you were just punched by a pleasant puff of air.

PERFORMANCE MARKER: Dialogue

LISTENING LINK: Listen to Thérèse Plummer

and Tristan Layton.

Is each character responding directly to the other?

Or rather, to some amorphous, don’t quite know who? Are the characters’ responses indicative of their emotional state based on what they just heard as well as how they’re predisposed? In other words, as they interact, are the characters engaged?        

The essential dialogue challenge for narrators isn’t speaking, it’s listening. Think of it this way: how can a character’s response believably resonate if that person hasn’t heard what was just said?

When dialogue sounds distant, oddly wooden, metaphorically ‘out there,’ the reason can usually be traced to one of two distinct possibilities: the storyteller simply can’t affect believable characterizations (bluntly, he can’t act) or in the pejorative show biz lingua franca, she’s ‘phoning it in’: reciting unfelt feelings, as if by rote, rather than inhabiting them; indicating emotions, rather than responding organically to them.

Considering the bottom line (emotional connection between listener and narrator), as reviewers critique dialogue, it is fair to consider: did that character who just spoke hear and then react to what was previously said? Or was it simply that character’s turn to speak?

What about accents, creating unique voices, and playing the opposite gender?

Remember the narrator’s chief concerns: reflecting the point of view of whom or what she is speaking about; honoring the author’s intent; keeping the listener connected. When an implausible sounding voice or opposite gender short-circuits the listener-narrator connection, the listener’s willing suspension of disbelief wriggles distractedly, uncomfortably, aesthetically frazzled, jarred. It’s as if the head phones had been unceremoniously ripped from the listener’s ears.

We know that the narrator plays every character. We accept that the storyteller is one sex. Of course individuated voices immediately identify who is speaking, and we certainly need to know whether the character is male or female. But I would argue, all things being equal, who characters are resonates more than what they sound like.

I often suggest to talent, play the character, not his voice; inhabit the gender. Males and females speak in differing rhythms and cadences and when an actor can locate those, gender differences become obvious.

Finally, less is almost always more. Subtle tonal shifts generally identify which sex is talking. Yes, the degree of characterization must fit the genre, and commensurately address the author’s vocal description of the person. But ultimately, if the characters aren’t  responding to what they heard, great character voices become little more than vocalized bling.

PERFORMANCE MARKER: Accents

Listen to Chuck Stransky

and Yelena Shmulenson.

Think: genre and aesthetic. Are their accents consistent with both? Chuck’s narrative is clearly comedic. Do these guys sound like comedic tough guys? Yelena’s story is dramatic. Does her accent support or interfere with the narrative’s intimate mood?

          Considering accents - domestic and foreign - think propriety, necessity, and less is more, generally.

An accent’s ‘thickness’ may reduce a 3-D character to1-D. A hint may be enough to fully believe the character is Irish. To aesthetically buy into the character, is an accent even necessary? Not if the accent isn’t directly indicated or implied.

Nothing distracts a listener from the narrative like an inauthentic, unidentifiable or plainly inaccurate accent. I always suggest to actors, if you can’t imitate the accent perfectly, don’t even go there, or just suggest a hint. Second, listeners accept that the narrator isn’t part Chinese, Italian, Mexican, British, South African, and Texan. A hint will maintain their suspension of disbelief, willingly.

The text - the primary reference for every performance question – may or may not provide clarity. If the author writes, “she said with a pronounced Kentucky twang,” the actor must comply. But just because the story takes place in Boston does not imply the characters all have to sound like JFK.

Imagine the cackling Brooklynite, driving home over the Verrazano Bridge, as he pauses the CD then glances at the wife:  “Dis here guy’s supposed to be from Canarsie? Fahhgetaboutit!” 

        

NON-FICTION

         There are at least two performance claims that distinguish non-fiction from fiction, and they’re interrelated:

PERFORMANCE MARKER: It’s the author’s story…

PERFORMANCE MARKER: …never the characters’ story

LISTENING LINK: Listen to Dennis Boutsikaris.

Do you have the distinct impression the author is speaking? Is Dennis reporting or inhabiting the author’s point of view?

         From a performance perspective the fiction narrator’s objective is to connect the listener to each character’s point of view. The non-fiction narrator is obliged only to connect us to the author’s.

The non-fiction author is eager to excite us about the ideas, characters or events she’s describing. Her objective is to convey her amazement, her fascination, and her belief that her story must be told, now.

When the narrator affects a ‘voice’ our focus shifts to the characterization and/or accent, to this actor’s vocal acuity. Suddenly, the author’s purpose is transgressed as we are aesthetically torn from  non-fiction’s calling: to illuminate, inform, or otherwise educate us about this particular topic.

Non-fiction characters aren’t really three-dimensional. They exist to serve the author’s intellectual purpose. Portrayal of their voice promotes them undeservedly, features them instead of the author and negates non-fiction’s performance mandate: author-listener connection.

         Think of it this way: When the non-fiction narrator affects Robert E. Lee’s southern accent, voices the Arab and Israeli, or imitates Lincoln, the aesthetic blow-back turns the author’s story into the actor’s audition: hey everyone, do I sound like Barak Obama or what!

EPILOGUE

AUNT MARY: The Narrator’s Altered Ego

         Readers of this blog are familiar with the vicissitudinous kvetchings of the ever suffering (and insufferable) would-be narrator, Aunt Mary. Tenaciously insistent, long on ambition, devoid of intuition, AM emailed me after reading my last post, insisting, “…once the reviewers here (sic) my skills, well, you can believe they’ll tell publishers to hire Aunt Mary for everything! You betchya!”

         Aunt Mary – the storyteller’s nightmare - is an obtusely arrogant agglomeration of vocal affectations that are incompatible with storytelling: She flamboyantly strains declaimed syntax, her not altogether unappealing vocal instrument torturing the ear like a Stradivarius infected with irritable bowel syndrome. Her artificially placed, mildly frantic pitch, and her modulated volume nauseate the narrative, as if the author wrote seasick. And her speedy reads reduce her male/female characterizations to stereotypical sound-alikes whose point of view always appears to be, who else? Aunt Mary’s.

But AM seeks employment, persistently - a serially misinformed performer who conflates words spoken with stories told. To her, it’s all about ‘the voice.’

But what about sentience?

Sorry AM, but you don’t get the storyteller as emotion’s conduit. You don’t feel the storyteller’s commitment to dislodge the palpable humanity embedded in the author’s narrative, then connect those live feelings into the listener. Alas AM, you’re a reader. End of story.

REVIEWER’S TEMPLATE SUMMARY

I hope reviewers will regard this template’s performance markers – from chewing the syntax to the here and now - as malleable assessment tools whose collective bias sheds informative light on the process of critiquing the narrator’s capacity to emotionally connect to the listener.

I think of each tool as an individual performance portal, or maybe a lens, through which the critic can analyze the particular storytelling element it addresses.

Finally, I am arguing that precise critique vocabulary exists (performance markers) that can be referenced by the reviewer in order to advise listeners about what they’re going to feel when they press ‘start,’ how much or how little they’re going to feel and why or why not.

Not For Librarians Only: How to review an audio book

How often do we reflexively interrupt someone as they expose their traumatized soul over an especially vexing circumstance with: ‘Well, if it were me, here’s what I’d do…’ As if we had the slightest interest and were even listening in the first place. Pleading guilty to being among those who’ve redirected someone’s agony to my unsolicited remedy, I at least try to censor that reflex if I can catch it in time.

     All to say - as a sort of rationalized, apologetic prelude to this post and the following one – when I read audio book reviews, from newspapers to library to other book related trade publications, my initial response is to note that the reviewer’s lack of performance vocabulary disables their ability to critique the narrator they’re reviewing. Finishing a typical review, I long for a critique that possesses the language to unpack performance (the ‘audio’), rather than the text (the ‘book’) so that the listener is accurately advised about what they’re in for. Halfway through I imagine myself whispering in the reviewer’s ear: ‘You know, if I were you, here’s how I’d review it…’

If it’s fair to suggest that many audio book reviewers appear ill-equipped to actually review what distinguishes the ‘audio’ from the ‘book,’ it may be useful to propose an audio book reviewer’s template that provides a road map for performance critique.

      Given the chutzpah it requires to presume (a) reviewers have a problem and (b) I have the fix, it’s important for me to devote this initial post to the following: What precipitated this desire to advance a ‘how to critique performance’ methodology?  What qualifies me to proffer it?

     (Again, I’ll devote the following post to the specifics: how to evaluate performance; what listeners should expect from narrators, along with the performance language to verbalize that expectation, etc.)

Last month I responded to an interview request from Mary Burkey for her “Voices in My Head” column that will appear in January’s Booklist magazine (the issue that is provided free to all attendees of the American Library Association’s Midwinter Conference.)

     While corresponding via email with Mary, we briefly discussed audio book narrators in general (what distinguishes great performances from mediocre ones) and what critique (or characterization) tools librarians in particular employ to rate performance.

     As we sought to identify so-called performance markers that might be useful in evaluating the narrator (as opposed to the narrative) it became evident that at least some librarians could benefit from a kind of storytelling critique tool kit. I subsequently asked Mary if she thought it would help reviewers to have a concise understanding of the nature of audio book performance as well as how to critique it. She responded: “I think you'd have many different reactions from librarians when asked about a narrator's performance in an audio. In my experience, there is just a small, small group of librarians who actually think about evaluating audio books differently than a print title, and who have the number of hours under the headphones to discern the qualities of a good narrator.” She mentioned her effort to instruct librarians in narration critique vocabulary so they can better discern performance: “That's why I created an Audiobook Lexicon when I chaired the first Odyssey Award committee. I have found that my lexicon is now passed along to incoming members of ALA's audiobook award committees - as even the most accomplished children's & YA literature experts (those who've served on Newbery or Printz committees) are entering new territory when evaluating audio.”

     Presuming there’s a need, and that my thoughts on addressing that need will be useful to librarians and other reviewers, what credentials do I possess that might add credibility to my remarks?

     I could list multiple industry honors awarded to titles I’ve produced since 1990, including two Best Spoken Word Grammys. I would also feel comfortable asserting that many performers whom I’ve directed over the past two decades, coached privately, and who’ve participated in my narrator workshops, have benefited (i.e., become better storytellers) from the particular performance tools I’ve administered (like a storytelling doctor writing a prescription and saying, take this, it’ll make you act better) while working with them.

     Rather than reeling off the awards and charitable high-fives from talent (much of which can be viewed on my website: tribecaaudio.com) I’d prefer to define, generally, my role as director/teacher/coach with the purpose of suggesting a particular worldview regarding creativity and craft – the two pillars of performance that, when valued equally by narrators, assure them the possibility of rising above mediocre towards the sublime.

It is often said that if you really want to learn something, teach it. That axiom consistently reflects my two decades experience as a director/teacher/coach. I’ve learned that my worth to a narrator transcends mere instruction: ‘Louder, faster, bite an apple to reduce mouth clicks, c’mon, you can do it better’ isn’t really what stimulates sublime performance. Rather, the narrator stands to actualize her full potential when the act of directing/coaching is construed by me as a mutual discovery portal. Rarely have I witnessed an actor’s ‘discovery moment’ without simultaneously sensing that I, too, have achieved insight, that I now better understand the storytelling process as well.

        

     Briefly, what do I mean by ‘discovery?’ Why is it a prioritized element of performance?

        

     For me, job-one (whether coaching a workshop participant or directing an experienced narrator) is to encourage discovery - a repetitive process whose outcome translates into a performance that both inspires and propels the actor to emotionally engage the listener.

     Discovery, as I imagine how it particularizes audio book narration, describes an inflection or nexus, a visceral “ah ha” moment that transcends language or conscious thought. Ongoing discovery is the narrator actively engaging the emotions embedded in the author’s words (what’s called: sub-text) so that he can tell the story in the moment, as if it were happening right now! The result of that present-tense engagement is ignition of the listener’s willing suspension of disbelief and an emotionally powerful bond between text, narrator and listener.

     Said differently, when the narrator is continually discovering the feelings embedded in the author’s text, he is both committed and connected to those feelings, as if they were happening immediately. It is that inveterate discoverer who keeps the listener in his car, buckled up, riveted to the last CD, even though he pulled in front of his house an hour ago. If you’ve ever heard a narrator who reminds you of a kind of passive reporter, as if the feelings he’s recounting have all the urgency of yesterday’s kisses, it is certain that there is no discovery.

Having directed audio books for two decades, taught storytelling to dozens of aspiring and professional narrators, it is apparent to me that if the narrator is the body, storyteller is the soul. Storytelling is the narrator’s art, her aesthetic. Inhabiting her inner storyteller - blending craft (performance technique, such as discovery) with intuition - is how she seeks to engage and enthrall her listener. In the best of all worlds, this is the narrator that consumers want and hope will appear when they borrow, or purchase an audio book. 

     In the next post,  I’ll suggest a template with specific performance vocabulary that audio book reviewers might employ to assess performance. For now,  I’d implore all reviewers to focus not so much on what they think of a given performance, but how emotionally connected they were to the storyteller they just heard. Forget the narrative, disregard the writer’s effort and remember, that from the storyteller’s point of view, the quality of the writing has no effect on their performance – zero.  Think while gazing through this performance lens: here’s what connected me to that storyteller, here’s what didn’t.

--

I recently had the pleasure of working with three highly regarded and often praised storytellers: Oliver Wyman, Barbara Rosenblat and Yelena Shmulenson. I’ll be working with David Pittu in January.

Interrogating A Narrator’s Nightmare: Oh, her! Every book she records sounds the same.

           Aunt Mary emailed yesterday, in a snit, her missive huffing incredulity, “Well, Paul, just received a reprehensibly unflattering response to my demo from a publisher I’ll name but you won’t. I quote, ‘Dear Aunt Mary, if you’re not sure why everything you narrate sounds the same, please listen to the following narrator. She is your competition.’

“So I listen. That’s my compeTITION? All her zillion-plus Audies, Earphones, even a Grammy. Gag me with a U-87! Flash! Every book sounded the same! Same tone, same male/female voices. You think I couldn’t recognize her from one book to the other. T-H-E S-A-M-E!  So, I call Robin Whitten who, hello!!! – understands AM. I play Robin me and the, ha! Audie winner. I says, Robin, I sound like me, and she sounds like her. So what’s the diff between us? Robin said, and I quote, politely, ‘I know this storyteller, Aunt Mary. I’ve heard her. And I’ve heard you. And believe me, she’s no Aunt Mary!’

“So, really, Paul, when someone says my samples all sound the same, I ask you, what narrator doesn’t always sound the same?”

          As I reached to delete her missive, recoiling more from AM’s grammar than her acrimony, I felt pinged by an injustice chord, correctly articulated by none other than herself. I thought, poor AM. Her ego has been caned by a variation of a commonly invoked performance pejorative (always the same) that glibly characterizes an actor who, at the end of the day, can’t act. The publisher simply particularized the epithet to suit the audio book narrator: every book you record sounds the same.

I wondered how any narrator subject to this criticism might feel if they were privy to it? While they might not regard ‘sounds the same’ as their worst nightmare, I am certain that this barb would stick in their head like an ice pick, howling, ‘I suck. Why would anyone hire me?’ It occurred to me that ‘sounds the same’ is particularly discouraging, existentially so, because it seems to attack the performer as well as the performance.

Worst nightmares aside, something disconcerting about that phrase needled me.  It doesn’t accurately describe a narrator’s real problem, including AM’s.  It’s also misleading. If interrogated, I thought, what might this put-down reveal about its accuracy and a narrator’s actual challenges.

           (Given that it’s meaningful for me to try and discover practical - that is, actable – performance portholes through which storytelling’s demands can be engaged, it’s worth examining ‘sounds the same’ through that practicality lens, along with trying to determine whether this phrase actually represents what we think it does).

          To begin with, I’d argue that all narrators do sound the same, always. If you’re a narrator, try this test (sorry AM, professionals only): listen to all your past work. Recognize your voice? Listen to multiple samples of other narrators’ work. Sound the same? Yes, of course. So, strictly speaking, ‘sound the same’ is a misnomer. Worse, this misleading critique implies that sounding different is a solution.

         ‘Sounds the same’ literally means identical vocal sound, as if that alone should condemn the actor, justify his disparagement for life. Given it’s impossible to speak definitively for others, I’m guessing that what people may actually mean when they cringe, Ugh! Every book sounds the same is: Every time I hear that voice I feel, well, nothing. I’m reminded of what I heard the last time; same-old boring same-old. I’m not moved and I don’t believe what I’m hearing, anyway. I’m disconnected not from the words, but rather, the narrator speaking them.

If, from a performance vantage, ‘sounds the same’ isn’t relevant, dissuades us from seeing the point, then can actors who fret over becoming the object of this nasty accusation stop fretting? Depends maybe on how neurotic they are, but I think ‘sounds the same’ shouldn’t frettin’ them!

In terms of assessing performance quality, ‘sounds the same’ is illogical syntax.  For example, imagine the opposite: If sounding different had anything to do with good acting then Sounding Different 101& 102, Advanced and Master Class Sounding Different would be de rigueur in every drama school curriculum. The plethora of Sounding Different books would all be downloadable from Audible.

           Ironically, I think narrators who attack the text by trying to sound different (that is, by imposing vocal variety) risk the very criticism they’re trying to avoid. Why? Because the text isn’t actable. All you can do with the words you see is vocally mismanage them, disingenuously. The actor can emphasize, modulate, accentuate the words ad nauseam, but he will still sound the same. The text (the author’s intellectual property) is merely syntax, that is, ordered black signifiers (letters, words, sentences, etc.) that, in turn, signify thought and emotion. Syntax isn’t actable, though it seduces the narrator, sneakily…c’mon, make me interesting!

          The sweet (authentic) fruit oscillates beneath the words, and in the white spaces between punctuation. It hangs there, daring the artist to pluck. When the actor - using his same voice, book after book - reaches for that fruit (i.e., plays the subtext) he reminds the listener that, no, it’s not my voice that matters to you, it’s me.  If I connect emotionally with you, guaranteed you won’t be thinking about my voice. In fact, you won’t be thinking at all. You’ll be feeling. And since this book is different than the last one I recorded, you’ll be feeling something different. So there. All better.

           I wish storytelling had as many moving parts as brain surgery (audio book narration doesn’t really measure up to medicine, does it. I mean, Tom Friedman will never write a book about America’s losing the storytelling race.)  Still, an authentic storyteller (as opposed to a reader) reaches out to the human experience differently than an authentic brain surgeon (presumably one who didn’t receive his MD online).  

If it were possible for a storyteller, one whose living finds him occupying a creative landscape, to momentarily extricate himself from the scourge of comparison, what might he conjure while experiencing that liberated space? How might he regard his work’s nature? He might say: When I’m on -  immersed in, not separated from the subtext – I am emotionally connected to the listener.  I, too, operate on the brain, on a location I may not comprehend medically, but can nevertheless feel.

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Having been on vacation the past three weeks, I’m looking forward to working with two of my favorite narrators on upcoming books: Oliver Wyman and Yelena Schmulenson.

        

‘As If:’ A Mantra For Mining the Subtext

“I make it sound as if I had no choice.”

– The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai

“They put on thick white robes and sit side by side on chaise longues as if they are, in fact, on board a ship.”

– I Married You For Happiness by Lily Tuck

It’s arguable that the words we think and speak are representations of abstract things. Once consciously formed and ordered syntactically, these abstractions appear before us, suddenly reified (that is, concrete, imbued with meaning). And yet, as we reflexively conjure more words, as we hear others’ words, our very engagement with these processes mediates language: concrete turns mushily transitory; meaning becomes what I meant, though not exactly, really.

Despite our inability to access the concrete from abstract, (Is there any word whose meaning all six billion of us can categorically agree to) we humans seem bent on trying: we deploy words and re-order our syntax in a Sisyphean-like effort to unpack and define ourselves, our nature, our existence.

Words, then, represent us to ourselves and others: who we are, how we feel, albeit vaguely, imprecisely, impossibly. (Duh! Any wonder words constantly fail us?)

During our endless sojourn through saying what we can’t possibly mean (or is it the reverse?) we humans have come to deploy an arsenal of linguistic tools - simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, etc. - to help us unpack, comprehend, make sense (impossibly) of our experience. Is it any wonder then, that an author’s words - replete with his particularized jargon, syntactic twists, linguistic black holes and potholes and whose meaning narrators are somehow supposed to magically transmit with their voice - are sometimes so confounding that they defy interpretation!

All to say, for a community of storytellers whose professional success is dependent on the ability to interpret words, as a director, I certainly feel narrators' pain. Trying to get a handle on what the author’s words really mean, what they’re actually purporting to say, can be a serious bitch!

If an author’s narrative – from the sublime to one whose vocabulary finds us questioning whether she (in the case of the Kardashian sisters, they) ever graduated elementary school – is merely the culmination of her foolishly intrepid peek, via language’s inherent limitations, into the human experience, how in the world does the humble audio book narrator psych herself up to decode 100,000 abstractions for their listener?

I’d argue: by committing herself, audaciously - not to the words, but what oscillates hotly beneath them, begging her to be taken. Or, As If  her professional life depended on her audacious commitment to subtext.

As a performer, a narrator’s As If challenge is – metaphorically – to grasp the listener’s hand, jump with him through the author’s syntax, burrow into the subtext, and emotionally connect him to the narrative’s journey.

Of course it’s imperative for the storyteller to understand the author’s intellectual intent. But remember, you can’t act intellectual understanding: from a performance perspective that’s the low hanging fruit. As a narrator, you’ll never wow the listener because you, like, really grasp the meaning or because you, like, totally understand romance or history or whatever your favorite genre happens to be.  

           As a performance mantra, As If  addresses the narrator’s fundamental acting challenge: mining the subtext. As If directs the performer to focus – not on what the words mean, but what they feel like – then to audaciously commit her performance to actualizing that feeling.

When As If dictates the performance, emotional connection between listener and narrator occurs. The outcome: organic storytelling.

Importantly, As If admonishes the narrator: Rather than importing vocal technique - whose sole purpose is to layer variety over the syntax, as if it were frosting on the cake - redirect your focus to the subtext, to your commitment to the words’ bubbling emotional core. Dig that subtext as if the life of those words depends on it. Because it does.

          

Referring to the fiction quotes above - both from books I recorded this year - note each one’s use of as if. I’d argue: As If  does to the narrative, what As If  does to the narrator.

         “I make it sound as if I had no choice.”  I couldn’t guess what as if contributes to the narrative, intellectually. But as if compels me to feel that something is up, emotionally: there’s more at stake than if the sentence read: “I had no choice.” 

As If - conjured with audacious abandon – is a narrator’s conscious commitment to prioritizing the narrative’s subtext. As If is a guidance mantra storytellers can point their intuitive creativity towards as they tremble their way through the impossibility of decoding the author’s words. As If is a results-oriented performance tool. (Close your eyes, Aunt Mary. Please don’t try this at home. Besides, remember your last harangue: “Subtext, shmubtext - all this subtext stuff gives me such a migraine-with my beauty-full voice, who needs it!”)

If I could, I’d request that publishers require their narrators to write As If on each book page. The suggestion: In each word there’s something at stake. So tell the story as if each word were imbued – not with meaning, but feeling - as if, when you completed the book, you’d willingly plead guilty to intent to commit emotional connection by audaciously digging into the subtext.

This past September I was privileged to conduct a workshop with LA narrators (some very experienced), most of whom record with an engineer or home alone. While working with these dedicated performers, it became apparent to me that as narrators employed ‘actable’ performance tools for the purpose of digging through the low hanging fruit (text) into the narrative’s marrow (subtext), their emotional commitment to the story soared commensurately, along with their creative satisfaction. When they discovered the subtext - relentlessly, audaciously - they empowered their storyteller’s intuition, zapped the listener with that creative energy, as if the pleasure listeners derived from their performance depended on it.

Finally, and not indirectly related to As If, a best friend of mine, whom I’ve known from our college days in South Dakota, recently visited us from that state, where he still lives. An avid audio book listener he mentioned, unsolicited: I listen to anything George Guidall reads; I lose myself in the way he tells a story.

I am aware that other narrators equally inspire that sort of listener devotion. For me, the meaningful takeaway from my friend’s remark is that it congratulates not the text, but rather, the storyteller’s devotion to the subtext. As my friend listens, he and George are connected, as if both were discovering, not the words, but what inhabits them, together.

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This past month I had the pleasure of working with narrators Thérèse Plummer and Barbara Caruso.