To Prep Or Not to Prep? That Is The Question: but perhaps not the relevant one

Several weeks ago the proposition - should narrators ‘prep’ their book before recording –  surprisingly (from my perspective) provoked a flurry of divergent opinions among a dozen or so Audio Book Crowd participants.

Why surprisingly? As a director/producer, I imagine querying a narrator soliciting employment:

“So, when you prep-”

 “Ya know, Paul, really, prep/schmep? C’mon, what’s the diff? Just, like, hire me, okay.”

 Really, I’d be thinking: Hire you? Ah, no thanks. But I will have the vegetable plate.

Grover Gardner (Studio Director for Blackstone Audio in Ashland, Oregon and an award winning narrator) spoke succinctly for me when he unequivocally urged narrators to ‘prep’ before entering the booth. I’d echo Grover’s instructive advice for what seems to me to be the obvious: There is an axiomatic relationship between preparation and confident storytelling.

If it’s fair to argue that prepping the book is a must (Is there really a downside to confidently knowing what you’re talking about in advance of saying it?) the emerging salient concern for narrators, and the thesis of this post, is: What exactly should the narrator be prepping? Additionally, what’s preppable, what isn’t and, importantly, what shouldn’t be prepped (because some prep may be hazardous to the listener’s experience).

M-W defines preparation as: “The action or process of making something ready for use…getting ready for some occasion.” Let’s localize this definition by determining how it applies to (cover your eyes, Aunt Mary) the narrator, or, to substitute my preferred nomenclature (an aesthetic, and more accurate and respectful characterization of this performance artist) the storyteller.

The Prepping Process:

Sort of like Spock’s mind meld, as storytellers read the book in advance their purpose is to emotionally engage the subtext so that when they enter the booth to record they can confidently tell the story because they’ve already been in touch with what’s coming emotionally. And the more confident the storyteller the more opportunity he or she has to accurately reveal the subtext’s emotional nuance.

So, if  emotionally engaging the subtext is the process (which I’ll discuss further), what, ultimately, does the process seek to accomplish? My answer: Connecting the narrative’s emotionality to the listener. That’s the storyteller’s bottom line: evoking listeners’ willing suspension of disbelief so they can uninterruptedly be emotionally involved with the story as if it’s happening in real time.

The Process: defining, locating and actualizing the subtext

The storyteller understands subtext. Still, it always feels useful to briefly define it in advance of prescriptively suggesting where to locate subtext, and then how to ‘prep’ it.

The author’s words – the text - are not actable because their sole preoccupation is intellectual, that is, meaning. So, looking through a performance lens, a word or a sentence is not, itself, actable. The word becomes actable only when its subtext (its feeling, its emotional consequence) is construed. As storytellers prep the book, what they are actually doing is discovering and engaging the feeling and the emotional consequence that is embedded in every single one of the author’s words so they can confidently reveal those feelings during the recording.

Simply stated: Subtext is preppable. Text isn’t. Try, as a storyteller, to get a handle on how to say “She eats carrots” without first investigating their emotional intention. Impossible.

To be sure, it is important for storytellers to intellectually grasp the text, to literally get what’s going on in both fiction and non-fiction, to know who are the good guys, the bad guys, and to generally understand the intellectual issues the author may be posing and/or grappling with. But intellectual acuity is, from a performance point of view, the low hanging, tasteless fruit. Why? Because, as I’ve suggested, you can’t act intellect. At the risk of redundancy it’s important for the storyteller to remember that, strictly speaking, just because he understands the Civil War better than anyone doesn’t mean he can compellingly tell its story. Authors who read their own work are living examples of why, if they value storytelling, they’ll always leave their book to a storyteller.

If it’s fair to suggest that acting is largely intuitive, as narrators prep the book, they must intuitively focus their eyes, as if they are dual X-ray ovals, on the ‘feeling’ (subtext) buried inside the syntax. And feeling is buried there, under each and every word, oscillating unhappily, as if it were a lonely, fallow soul, anxiously waiting to be discovered and plucked from inside the (non-actable) syntax, so that it can intentionalize the words with its emotional consequence.

As their eyes pass over the narrative, it is every storyteller’s task to reflexively ask: What’s this character feeling (not thinking)? What are the emotional stakes? And then, as only an intuitive performer can, the storyteller must inhabit and engage that feeling with the sole purpose of vocally transferring it, as the author’s conduit, to the listener.

Until the subtext has been identified (happy, sad, morose, elated, etc.), engaged, and internalized, there is no opportunity to liberate that emotionality and then deliver feeling’s consequence to the listener.

Prep Hazard

Narrators who prep the book by underlining or highlighting or drawing curvy lines above words and phrases for the purpose of remembering to emphasize them may, albeit unintentionally, aesthetically compromise their best intentions, sometimes damagingly so. Why? Because emphasis that occurs non-organically (that is, when it’s not the result of in-the-moment sub textual revelation) is an emotional disconnector, the dead opposite of what the storyteller wants to create.

I would argue that narrators who are intent on engendering interest by vocally imposing emphasis or modulation, risk the unintended consequence of compromising their emotional connection to the listener. If severing willing suspension of disbelief, removing listeners from the narrative’s emotional consequence - as if it were occurring right now - is the outcome, all that’s necessary is to vocally Aunt Mary the words, that is, impose emphasis. Non-organic emphasis may catch the listener’s attention but only because he or she has disconnected emotionally in order to intellectually consider what should be felt.

Process, it seems to me, is meaningful when it dutifully serves its correctly understood outcome. If prep’s outcome is emotionally connecting the listener to the narrative, then, like Spock, the subtext meld should be the storyteller’s primary 'prep' objective while reading the book in advance of recording.

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Over the past month I’ve enjoyed working with Tony Danza, Andrew McCarthy and, on a separate multi-cast recording, a group of talented storytellers, including: Eliza Foss, Vinnie Penna, Carol Monda, Richard Ferrone, Cynthia Darlow, Emma Galvin and... more to come on the next post.

I’m also looking forward to upcoming narrator workshops in New York, San Francisco and Atlanta (www.tribecaaudio for details), to completing a non-fiction memoir (Hairpin Turn: Raising Myself Through My Son’s Teenage Years) and beginning a low-residence fiction MFA program (which will allow me to write at home while continuing to direct and produce audiobooks) in November.

If An Author Had Just One Wish For Their Book’s Narrator…

If Lisa Scottoline, Philip Roth, Ben Coes, Tui T. Sutherland, Ron McLarty, Maggie Stiefvater, T.C. Boyle, J.M. Coetzee, Franz Kafka, Jhumpa Lahiri, Neil Gaiman, and Henry James (or any author from any century, regardless of merit or popularity) were seated around a table and were permitted the opportunity to speak with the narrator who’d been hired to record their book, but limited to only one sentence - so they’d better make it count – what might they say? I’m certain they’d plea in unison: “Recognize the stakes and keep them upped, organically.”

As experienced and hopeful narrators cruise the Javits Center during APAC, 2012, searching for employment, garnering the attention of publishers and producers so they’ll be favored with the opportunity to record a book for them, it is worthwhile, I hope, for them to step back and consider that, as storytellers, their obligation is to fulfill the narrative’s performance demands that are located in the subtext.

From the author’s point of view, as I imagine it through a performance lens, nothing is more compelling within the subtext than the ‘stakes.’ The stakes are the ‘degree of consequence embedded in the subtext'. The stakes aren’t the emotions - whether its anger, happiness, melancholy, confusion, nonplussed disillusionment, or any feeling, from subtle to palpable – but rather the degree or amount of consequence narrators assign them as they literally speak the words. And parenthetically, every single one of the author’s 100,000 word book is impregnated with emotion, so there’s always consequence, always stakes.

Organically upping the stakes means heightening the consequence assigned to them as the narrator allows the subtext (where organic - that is, authentic – feeling is located) to direct him emotionally, rather than him directing the subtext by modulating or emphasizing or vocally indicating feeling, as if indicating in order to create emotionality isn’t oxymoronic -  in other words, Aunt Marying the subtext.  

Narrators who intuit the stakes and are committed throughout the recording to keeping them upped, organically, should have authors clamoring for them to narrate their book, as well as potential employers.

There are, to be sure, myriad assets narrators can bring to a performance but I’d argue that none – from the most sublime voice to the sweetest mic to the best Boston accent – match, even when packaged together, this most pressing performance demand: playing the stakes, and keeping them upped, not just now and then, not in passages where it appears obvious, like when the victim’s tongue is surgically removed while he’s awake, but continually, no matter what’s being described.

Axiomatically, loss of consequence, or its diminishment, renders the narrative’s emotionality less consequential, less urgent, even unimportant sometimes. When consequence deprivation lowers the stakes it’s an author’s worst nightmare because authors never, never regard the emotionality embedded in their words as, “ah, whatever.”

Ironically, many narrators are dogged (to be sure, some more than others) by consequence loss, more commonly and euphemistically known as, lack of energy. Though no narrator would purposefully tell a story with low or insufficient energy, that is precisely what often occurs while recording a book, more with emerging narrators, yet with experienced storytellers as well. Why? I’m not sure. But when the consequences sound to my ear unaddressed, as if the author had written undeserving, lukewarm, lazy syntax (and remember, we’re not judging quality, only intent), I often suggest to the narrator: “Up the stakes.”

So, what’s the stakes-slip antidote, especially if you’re an inexperienced narrator and uncertain about just how committed, or intense, or passionate you should sound, and especially if you’re working in a home studio or only with an engineer? How are the stakes upped? And where are they, again?

First, it’s essential for the storyteller to be mindful of the stakes, and to remember that they’re ubiquitous. Second, to regard, from a performance point of view, a work of fiction or non-fiction as about one thing only: feeling. Third, to remember that you’re not playing the words, you’re digging the subtext, responding to and then connecting the listener emotionally to whom or what you’re talking about. Last - whether at home or with an engineer or even a director – to sit back occasionally and interrogate the subtext by literally imagining the emotional consequence oscillating inside the words. And then listen to the author implore you: Recognize the stakes, keep them upped, organically.

Over the past week it was my pleasure to have worked with Jeff Woodman and Elisabeth Rogers. During the coming weeks I look forward to working with Barbara Rosenblat, Chris Delaine and Nicola Barber.

Interrogating The Schmooze: a note to narrators mining for work at APAC, 2012

         

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!”

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I’ll be hosting a panel discussion at APAC: Casting the Voice. Check online for update on panelists.

Seduce the Listener or Satisfy the Author

Confronting all narrators as they prep a book is an either/or proposition that is located in their relationship to the narrative: Either I ‘impress’ the text by prioritizing my vocal acuity, or I defer to the author’s syntax and play the subtext. In effect, will I seduce the listener by flaunting my vocal stuff, highlight words and phrases I’d prefer to emphasize, as if they somehow require my input, or will I reflect inwardly in order to mine my performance cues from the author’s emotional intent?

It’s apparent to this blog’s readers that Aunt Mary would choose the former and that a storyteller must opt for the latter. Clearly most narrators would agree that the text should arbitrate the storyteller’s vocal choices. If that’s true, then what’s the problem?

I think what’s at stake is that narrators – particularly those who work alone, or with an engineer, or without the benefit of sub textual feedback from a director - may have a tendency to prioritize their vocal technique (ironically, especially if they are experienced, facile storytellers) over the author’s intent, rather than the reverse. Why? I’m not sure. But I suspect that at least some of this desire is perpetuated by a kind of low hanging and tempting performance fruit: accolades and congratulatory notices from listeners and reviewers who mistake rock ‘em, sock ‘em energy for storytelling.

The more authentic performance fruit (the subtext), I’m suggesting, sways – equally plump and tasty – beneath the words, where the text’s feeling is located. This fruit – which supplies vitamin point of view – need only be acknowledged and then prioritized by narrators in order for them to take their direction from it.

Bottom line: In order to address the listener’s needs, the narrator must satisfy the author’s.
To further unpack this notion, read the following text and think: So, okay, how would I respond emotionally to these words so that I tell the story, not as I’d prefer, but as the author wishes me to?


"The trees had begun to change with the sugar maples leading the way, their golden-red leaves glowing through the rain-spattered windshield. It was October. Sam loved the ephemeral majesty and beautiful decay of fall, yet she couldn’t enjoy it. Winter loomed. The promise of cracked lips from parched indoor heat, burned cheeks from pin-prick winds, the grit of sand and salt everywhere. This would be their third winter in Madison and she wondered how she would bear it, stuck inside with Ella who was increasingly mobile, crawling circles around the living room, as darkness closed them in by four o’clock."


The narrator’s seduce-the-listener approach might be: “Hmmm, melodramatic stuff. I can feel the tension. And, yeah, certain words just beg for my highlighter pen so I can be sure to stress them. Yeah, I’m gonna really pace this up and, let’s see, I’ll highlight 'rain-spattered', 'cracked lips', 'pin-pricked' – ohh that’ll give ‘em the creeps – and, yeah, 'crawling circles'. Scary, scary!”

And so the narrator begins looking at this text from the outside, in: That is, she immediately calls up her performance melodrama model, knowing she’s gonna scintillate the listener with her vocal technique.

The narrator’s satisfy-the-author approach might be: Unpacking the text from the author’s lens, believing that the subtext will, if prioritized, direct the narrator, alerting him to volume, pace, emphasis, etc.

How does the subtext direct the narrator’s emotional choices? Primarily by alerting the narrator to ‘point of view.’ Regard each sentence and wonder, whose pov is this?

So, with this paragraph, I’d ask the prepping narrator to focus on highlighting pov as a way to consider vocal choices:

Sentences 1 and 2: “The trees……spattered windshield.” “It was October.” The omniscient storyteller.
Sentence 3: “Sam loved…enjoy it.” Sam’s pov.
Sentences 4 and 5: Winter loomed….and salt everywhere.” The omniscient storyteller.
Sentence 6: “This…four o’clock.” Sam’s pov.

Once narrators engage point of view – that is, allow the text to direct them vocally – volume, pacing, and emphasis have an opportunity to occur organically (from the inside, out). Intuitively, the narrator comes to understand that because his vocal choices are now dictated by the text, they’ll match the text, they’ll give back emotionally what’s given to them.

For narrators, the question may not be, do I prepare, but how do I? Do I value the text first? If I do, what do I look for?

Next post I’ll propose some audio examples that specifically satisfy the author, especially focusing on point of view.
*
I most recently enjoyed working with Shannon Mcmanus

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.