WHEN ‘BAD’ BOOKS HAPPEN TO ‘GOOD’ NARRATORS

  

An award-winning narrator and friend emailed me last week and recounted a distressing conversation he recently had with some of his colleagues concerning the plethora of crummy books they must endure narrating while hoping a literary (or at least semi-literate) story will mercifully come their way, at least once in a blue moon. Speaking for everyone, he confided that continually investing their talents in poorly written, hastily produced, and/or gratuitously smutty books hamstrings their creative purpose, leaves them disgruntled, aesthetically disfigured and regularly muttering: “Why should I care? How can I do my best work in these circumstances?"

Exploring rich characters and mining the subtext is what all storytellers aspire to, in theory, my friend suggested. But reality finds narrators mostly asked to record terrible books, “...riddled with clichés, cheap metaphors, and too often an overwhelming lack of subtext.”

To be fair, he suggested that, yes, narrating bad books is commensurate with his occupation’s mandate: Record what you’re handed. “The truth is,” he added, “that we all take jobs from time to time for the paycheck, and not the love of the material. We have bills to pay, and much as we'd love to stand on artistic principle, we…can't always pick and choose.”

His email concluded with a request for any insight I might have, specifically regarding how to emotionally navigate what he described as “real turkeys” in a way that maintains his integrity as a storyteller and, as he suggested, his artistic principles.

Though no coherent answers or insights immediately come to mind, I do suspect that all creative people, including narrators, suffer a kind of psychic damage - personally and professionally - when they engage in non-creative work they deem, at the very least, diminishing and aesthetically meaningless. Assuming my characterization accurately reflects narrators’ concerns, I think there’s value in unpacking this particularly unsettling dilemma.

The Bad Book/Good Narrator Conundrum.

In my experience, virtually all creative artists (sorry Aunt Mary, you’re free to take a break) identify with their aesthetic, as if it were a vital organ. Additionally, they possess a moral compass that conflates their self-worth and integrity with the quality of their work and its artistic merit. Said prosaically, creative types ain’t in it for the bucks. Not that they’d turn good money down, but it’s the aesthetic reward (located perhaps in a momentary connection to a transcendent, higher calling) that fuels their desire to perform. All the creative people I know, including storytellers, axiomatically co-mingle their feelings about ‘the work’ with feelings about ‘themselves.’ It is this co-mingling of feeling that, at least in part, propels storytellers to reflexively recoil at yet another “turkey book.” It is this co-mingling of feeling that represents the heartbeat of what I’ll call: The Bad Book/Good Narrator Conundrum.

How then does the storyteller/artist, who I’ll argue will be fortunate to record one good book for every 50 turkeys, address this distressing fact of artistic life?

My initial response is to deconstruct this Bad Book/Good Narrator Conundrum by suggesting: There’s no such thing as a ‘bad’ book without a ‘good’ narrator. (I’ll explain further shortly). Then, in an effort to wed critique to solution, I’ll propose an aesthetic antidote, a storyteller bromide, or a conundrum cure, as in: Take two of these before starting a “turkey book” and you’ll get through the next six hours. 

‘BAD’ book/‘GOOD’ narrator

Let’s begin with a particularized lens through which we can define ‘bad’ book/‘good’ narrator. That lens is: Me!

As producer/director of more than 500 audio books, believe me, I know from ‘bad’ narrative. I confess truthfully and categorically to having guffawed, cried and agonized over what publishers call books but to me are income generating commodities – little more than page after page of stupefying, banal, gratuitous manure.

And there you have my definition of a ‘bad’ (turkey) book - income generating commodity - and thus, the definition. Do I mean that I am the arbiter of what’s good and bad, literary vs. crapola? Yes. But who am I to say what’s ‘bad?’ Precisely! I’ll explain: I am an educated (MA degree), middle-class (income well above the national average), white (majority race), Jewish and irreligious (not an oxymoron) male who lives in the bluest of blue states. Ask me to recommend a book, I’ll suggest one by J.M. Coetzee, Philip Roth or Jhumpa Lahiri. I possess a literary aesthetic that easily permits me to instantly conjure a ‘bad’ book/‘good’ book binary.

Uh, hold on there, one could argue. What if I wasn’t who I am? Suppose I was less educated, barely graduated high school, and my primary reading experience was the headline banner on Fox News. What if I never heard of Proust, or Roth, or Joyce, much less Henry James? Suppose all I ever wanted in a book was sexual titillation, and bullet riddled bodies graphically spewing gooey pools of crimson blood? Drop Joyce Carol Oates in front of me and I am not only uninterested but suspicious of you: What the hell is this? Probably some lesbo, lefty crap. But a thriller that exposes threateningly accented, towel-headed evil doers for the world dominators they are! That’s something I can relate to. Hell yeah, that’s a ‘good’ book.

Hoping to avoid the clichés and cheap metaphors that plague the books narrators are complaining about, I’ll reductively summarize my proposition: While you can’t tell a ‘bad’ book by its cover, you can tell one by the ‘bad’ person who reads (or listens) to it. In other words, what’s a bad book to me (to the person I am) may be reprehensible precisely because it’s so appealing to people I am contemptuous of, or frightened of, people who definitely don’t share my values and aesthetic. A fast paced, gratuitously violent beach read may be someone’s definition of ‘good,’ but to me, it’s meaningless drivel: “Bad book! Bad book. Yuk! Get away. You gross me out!”

In effect, I am suggesting that an important measure of an audio book’s ‘badness’ (or ‘goodness’) is narrators’ very understanding of themselves as well as their listeners’ understanding of themselves. Additionally, once the good/bad line is drawn, there may be a non-rational tendency to absolutize, to reify what this abstract line represents: Those who stand on the opposite side are not me or people like me and I should regard them suspiciously and contemptuously.

THE ‘GOOD’ NARRATOR’S PECULIAR CHALLENGE

Is it fair to suggest that virtually all audio book narrators are highly educated, at least when compared to the national average? Culturally and politically similar? I’ll bet, yes. Certainly narrators represent a geographical cross section of America, otherwise they are a rather homogenous lot. And this speaks directly to the way I understand ‘good’ narrator. Not good, as in, talented. Not good as in, nice guy/gal. But aesthetically good, and perched high above the bumpkin masses.

Since most narrators are literate, educated, culturally and politically similar, they are driven by an aesthetic vision of themselves that is anathema to those who would listen to, not to mention enjoy and actually prefer, the ‘bad’ books they’re compelled to narrate.

The aesthetic by-product of who I am vs. what I must narrate is: The Bad Book/Good Narrator Conundrum. So, how might good narrators respond more positively to these “turkey books” that mock their creative purpose, suck their performance juices bone dry and are deeply offensive to them?

 THE CONUNDRUM CURE

First, what qualifies me to prescribe an antidote to an aesthetic dilemma that, arguably, is profoundly troubling to narrators? I’ve already mentioned my “turkey book” experience. But I’ve also been fortunate to produce and direct aesthetically rewarding fiction and non-fiction as well. Since I regard myself as culturally/intellectually ‘good,’ I’d like to think that I share a common bond with anyone who’s narrated a “turkey book.” I can relate. And as I'm still directing, I still feel your pain.

It is impossible for me to even vaguely suggest to a storyteller how they should emotionally mediate a “turkey book,” or what the line is and where to draw it when considering, after having been made an offer, ‘how aesthetically low do I go.’ Providing a moral and psychological blueprint that leads to an answer far exceeds my pay grade.

But I am a creative type, I can relate to this conundrum that distresses narrators because I’m bombarded by it as a director, and I can introspectively question what confounds and troubles me. In that spirit, I’ve chosen to examine ‘good’ and ‘bad’ through this particular autobiographical lens. In doing so, my hope for storytellers is that they might revisit their fundamental aesthetic claims in a way that permits them to feel better about their professional choices and themselves as well. Finally, I hope that interrogating ‘good’ and ‘bad’ leads to other, perhaps far more illuminating ways, to address these concerns.

I have avoided prescriptive advice so far. No more.

“Audiofile Magazine features commentary from narrators whose audio books are highlighted in their monthly Editors Picks section. A narrator – as sublime a storyteller as I know – whose Earphone Award winning audio book was recently recognized in that section sent me his contribution:

"Occasionally I’m given a book that’s either so beautifully crafted, or so wonderfully observed, or that I connect with so deeply, that recording it is pure joy.The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving  is all three. Benjamin, the protagonist, is so sweetly damaged, and his coming to terms with a tragedy of which he was the principle architect is so believably wrought, that while prepping the manuscript (a process too often more about vocal choices and vocabulary lists than about emotional investment) I was reduced to tears repeatedly. Both a pleasure and a privilege to perform.”

            -Jeff Woodman

For me, Jeff Woodman imagines a worldview that soothes this Bad Book/Good Narrator Conundrum’s aesthetic heart, and stimulates me to rethink the relationship between who I am and the work I do, feeling okay about myself along the way.

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I am happy that my September weekly and October weekend, New York narrator’s workshops are full. Additionally, I’m looking forward to conducting my first workshop in San Francisco this September.

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.