Prioritizing the Messenger & Don’t Say It at APAC

 Prioritizing the Messenger

As a matter of practice, I never discuss narrators by name in my posts (other than to mention those I’ve directed) or specific programs I’ve worked on. But here, an anecdotal exception: In order to raise a larger concern regarding an audio book reviewer’s priority, it feels useful to identify a narrator I recently directed.

Below is an Audiofile review that cites the text as the primary fouler of the reviewer’s critical mood. To be fair, the narrator isn’t criticized, much less vilified. The reviewer’s vilifying flak is aimed at the message (the narrative). That said, the messenger (narrator) manages to suffer—albeit collaterally—from the reviewer’s pot shot at the text. That’s too bad and, in fact, shouldn’t occur.

COLD CITY F. Paul Wilson, Read by Alexander Cendese • Unabridged • MARCH 2013 
Brilliance Audio • Trade Ed.
Brilliance Audio • Library Ed.

The first novel of a trilogy about the early days of a character named Repairman Jack is an exciting whirlwind of adventures involving a child slavery ring, cigarette smuggling, Mafia shakedowns, Muslims with insidious plans, con men, and a love story. If that sounds like too many plots, it is. The novel ends with no resolution for any of them. Cruel, but it guarantees the sale of the next two parts of the series. Narrator Alexander Cendese gruffly performs the book, which details Jack's early years as an adventurer. His accents get a workout-- Arab, Southern, German, Puerto Rican, and an over-the-top Jewish man --and all sound authentic. It's impossible to turn off, but the unsatisfying ending is a disappointment. M.S. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine



To be clear, reviewers must be tenure-free to critique as they wish, so this interrogative essay shouldn’t be construed as a grievance over the reviewer’s autonomy. I do, however, want to argue that the storyteller’s performance should not be subsumed by the text’s literary efficacy. The audio book reviewer’s mandate should be to disaggregate narrative from narrator and then prioritize the storyteller’s performance. Critiquing the narrative should be secondary.

Audiofile isn’t Bookfile. Meaning, difficult as it is for anyone— including audio book reviewers—to separate narrator from narrative, I want to implore reviewers to consider the storyteller’s primary task: Emotionally connecting the listener to the author’s words. That performance obligation should be the reviewer’s fundamental priority.

Narrators have no control over the book. They should be immune from conflation with it. Narrators, who cannot rewrite or edit the narrative, must— as best they can— faithfully serve the author’s intent. Sometimes this includes believably crying out, “I hate you,” she said angrily!”

As the narrator and I began to work on Cold City, we devoted our efforts to creating a performance that faithfully responded to what the text presented us. Did we have our opinions about the text? Naturally. Did they matter? No. Do they ever? From a performance perspective, never! I’m positive that the audio book publisher—who never solicited my opinion or the actor’s—is not remotely interested in our literary observations. Their concern is the best possible performance the storyteller can give them.

It may be fair to argue that there’s an axiomatic relationship between an audio book reviewer’s assessment of the text and the performance. And it may, indeed, be difficult to hear a compelling or even good performance when the text is screaming at the reviewer, I stink. But it’s also fair to argue: Why review an audio book if you’re not going to reserve the majority of your kudos or disdain for the audio?

The Cold City review’s penultimate observation is an acknowledgement of the actor’s believable foreign accents. They “all sound authentic,” it says.

It is an audio book reviewer’s prerogative to briefly mention an actor who authentically creates, “Arab, Southern, German, Puerto Rican, and an over-the-top Jewish man”—as if creating such disparate characters and still maintaining the listener’s willing suspension of disbelief is no big deal. I’d argue that a narrator who can vocally pull that off is worth more than, “His accents get a workout.”

Don’t Say It at APAC

Over the past few months several experienced narrators I’ve coached have grimaced uncomfortably and half whispered at one point during our session, “Sorry, but I’m really not an actor.”

I hope that all narrators—and especially those attending APAC— will proudly regard themselves as actors. Storytelling is performance! I’ll bet that all publishing professionals attending APAC who employ narrators desire people that can act, as opposed to recite or read, or disconnectedly modulate. Indeed, they may prefer a great voice but what will get their long term attention is a compelling storyteller.

If an actor isn’t required to narrate an audio book, then who is? Why not employ the high school kid working at the 7/11. Narrators who attend APAC believing that the actor—that is, the person who intuits the text’s emotional consequence and connects those feelings to the listener—is the publisher’s best candidate for the job are thinking smartly.

NEXT POST: An exploration of what care for the self might imply in regards to compelling storytelling.

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This past month I was delighted to work on a multicast book with these talented storytellers (in alphabetical order): Alex Cendese, Chris Delaine, Lauren Fortgang, Emma Galvin, David Ledoux, Daya Mendez, and Karen Murray. Upcoming: the author, Eve Ensler and narrator, Carol Monda.

My LA Weekend Narrator’s Workshop in April is almost filled (1 opening remains) and the NY weekend workshop later that month is over half full.

My goal for these and future workshops is to identify and practice self-directing techniques that will quickly improve performance and create compelling storytellers.

For more information or to register, visit: Tribecaaudio.com

Finally, my MFA fiction writing program, while demanding, has been productive. After May I’ll be able to increase the frequency of my posts—until the fall. For now, urged by the mentor I’m working with, I’ve begun submitting one of my short stories for publication. I can relate to any performer who may have had a similar thought while soliciting: It’s true! Everyone thinks they can do this!

Writing & Narrating Is Apples and Apples: Green and Red

I’m allowing myself an hour to assert an aesthetic bridge between writing and narrating, to connect one to the other with the hope of better understanding what I suspect writers and narrators share.

I’ve been at it 4 minutes, and after having carefully thought about what I’d like to say while taking a shower, as I dried myself, the thoughts that seemed so resiliently clear under the driving water, have evaporated. And maybe here’s a relationship already: The writer thinks, wow, do I have an idea, brilliant, insightful, I can’t wait to get going and the narrator thinks, oh, I’m so, so right for this book and then, maybe it all comes to fruition, maybe it doesn’t. Creating is a bitch.

So far, this feels more like a blog, randomly meandering around thoughts not baked. My past blogs take me forever to write: Often over a dozen hours each. Here, with 49 minutes left—guilt already plaguing the back of my mind, as I’d planned to work on a short story this morning and for reasons I’m certain many writers share (all fitting into a bowl labeled procrastination), I’m now finally getting to what I’d planned to do when the time to do it was right, which it isn’t really now, or I wouldn’t feel guilty.

My goal for these writing and narrating relationship posts is to create a dialogue—with myself and narrators and writers who understand storytelling—that ultimately would like to uncomfortably suggest commonalities shared by these disciplines. I like uncomfortably because that word indicates a reflexive openness to critiquing myself and others, always with the purpose of digging deeper for insight rather than criticizing for the purpose of asserting right or wrong.

In the shower I still remember thinking: What is the aesthetic core shared by writers and storytellers? And that caused me to wonder: What is a writer? What is a storyteller? And then, are Philip Roth and Danielle Steel both writers? Are Aunt Mary and—fill in your favorite—both storytellers? (I resist naming names of narrators I am close to because it’s simply exclusionary of narrators I am not close to but who are equally talented and that feels uncomfortable).

Before diving presumptuously into defining writer—an act of banal conceit begging for insight that I imagine is similar to someone who, say, jumps off a high diving board into cement as a way of illuminating the meaning of life. But whatever, I’m down to 27 minutes.

By way of backtracking—I use too many em dashes and can’t ever seem to say what I mean without a preface (ever wonder why writers write a preface? I do. Why not just write the damn book)—it feels important to suggest that, for me, when discussing writing and acting, terms like good and bad, I like or I don’t like, are aesthetically useless and oddly dangerous because personalizing a feeling and then reifying it, as if this abstract, now concretized, in any way works towards discovery of what’s aesthetically salient, seems misguided. At least to me. In short (and here, I like the F bomb, I use it liberally in my fiction, but for this blog’s purpose I’ll just use F), who F*****cares what I like or what you like? Who cares what I or you think is good or bad? Those notions entertain at the dinner table, cocktail party, bar, but really, they’re intellectual conversation stoppers. Meaning, Oh, I love your work. What actually does that imply? Who cares???

Fifteen minutes to go and, mercifully, my point: Philip Roth is an artist; Danielle Steel is a hack. Aunt Mary is a hack; you know who is an artist.

When I write fiction, I (Paul, and whoever Paul is, thinks he is) employs form (craft) and intellect (brought to me by language) to create a story that resists conventional certainty about who and what we are. When Danielle writes, she embraces conventional certainty; she already knows what we already know about ourselves: The result, a hack regurgitates what we know and feel we already know we should feel, conventionally. When Aunt Mary narrates, she modulates as a way of emphasizing what we already know we should know about how we should feel: The result, we feel what we already think we should feel, conventionally speaking. AM is a hack.

What do I aspire to as a fiction writer? I think, in a very particular way, the same as what the storyteller aspires to. We both uncomfortably interrogate a story about people and events we blindly discover we know only to the degree that we don’t, and we insist, uncomfortably, that’s okay.

Time is up. Next post a very little background about my MFA writing experience. I meant to get to that in this post and would have if I rewrote it. I also would have cut down on the em dashes and colons. 

A Narrator’s Quick Fix Cheat Sheet. Part 3: Interview with Co-Director,YOU.

I began my search for The Text’s co-director, You, at John Marshall Media in New York. I’d interviewed some promising candidates but finding the right You proved to be an elusive and exhausting endeavor: Aunt Mary showed up under thirteen aliases. Often, I observed even articulate Yous struggling to coherently express their function as the narrator’s significant other co-director in succinct, actable vocabulary.

Finally: A minor miracle. My last You of the day wafted into the studio. After minimal pleasantries, a perusal of You’s Narrator’s award-winning audio book vitae, I was treated to an itemization—proffered with seminal clarity—of You’s co-director responsibilities. You’s actable directions immediately convinced me—and here transparency compels me to note that my condition for acceptance was that You’s views on technique be commensurate with those I espouse and teach—that I’d found the narrator’s quintessential co-director: You.

I said, impetuously: “You, I want you.”

Surprised, You said, “You?”

“No, You!” I repeated. “Not me.”

“You,” said You, raising a congratulatory fist in the air.

 This interview was going to be a pronoun nightmare. I sputtered: “You, I’ll head into the booth-”

“But, what about You?” said You.

At that point I sprinted out the control room for our engineer, Tony Van Hoorn. I beckoned: “I have You.”

“Me?” said Tony.

“No, You.”

“Who?”

Having worked with Tony over a decade, he politely and typically nonplussed, ignored my obfuscation, and trundled into the control room.

“Take You into the booth,” I asked Tony. “Please.”

“Me?” Tony said.

“Oy. Sorry, Tony. I pointed. “You.”

“Oh,” said Tony. “You!”

Settled in the booth in front of two mikes, I tentatively began.

PAUL: You, welcome. Ah, this is gonna get syntactically tricky. Can you, I mean, we, can we sort of try and figure You out?

YOU: You is an open book.

I noticed Tony’s head had disappeared in his hands.

PAUL: So, you are You only. No me or I?

YOU: You does prefer You. But let’s go grammatically conventional.

PAUL: I thank you.

YOU: I—­ugh!—thank you. I! So déclassé.

I exhaled prayerful relief.

PAUL: Okee-dokee. You. Remember what you initially told me needed definition before you could enumerate a single actable direction for narrators?

YOU: You do. Sorry. I do.

I felt identity-secure.

YOU: That my directions are techniques. And technique is defined as an actable performance tool whose purpose is to cause compelling storytelling. My job-one is to provide the narrator with an actable, self-directing roadmap that compensates for what appears to be the irreversible trend.

PAUL: Working either alone in a home studio or with an engineer.

YOU: Directionless storytelling. 

PAUL: How about I specify various narrator acting challenges. You then tell me how You, as the storyteller’s co-director, actably address them.

YOU: Glad actably was used. That’s vital. Only actable directions transform performance, and quickly I’d add.

PAUL: Narrators don’t have all day.

YOU: Amen!

PAUL: Some narrators sound emotionally uncertain, whether it’s about what a character is feeling or the narrative’s mood. 

YOU: Because they haven’t emotionally connected to the text and therefore can’t help reading or announcing it.

PAUL: Problem noted.

YOU: Now the actable antidote. While looking at the text in preparation to record, Direction #1: Verbalize your emotional state, silently or aloud. Don’t utter the first word till you know how you feel: Happy, sad, frustrated, angry, etc. Whatever the subtext is telling you.

PAUL: You are directing your narrator to hit the page emoting.

YOU: Precisely. Too often, I’ve tapped my narrator’s psychic shoulder in mid-sentence and whispered, ‘hey, what are you feeling? Right now?’ Silence.

PAUL: And why was that?

YOU: Because my narrator wasn’t acting, just speaking words unfelt.

PAUL: And your narrator’s eventual response?

YOU: Something like, ‘Well, I’m just painting the picture, setting the scene, or the character you know, comes from a bad home.’

PAUL: But what if the text isn’t emotionally clear?

YOU: The narrative’s subtext—where emotionality quivers—may not be immediately recognizable or obvious or, arguably, evident. But, think of it this way: Does the author ever intend for the listener to be disengaged? Ever? Besides, emotionality is inherent in language. So it is incumbent upon narrators to dig into the subtext, like a crazed ferret if necessary, locate feeling, reveal it. Trust me, an emotionless word is an oxymoron.

PAUL: Okay, so assuming the narrator immediately connects to the text, what other actable directions can they employ to maintain that connection?

YOU: Meaning, what specific techniques can narrators physicalize, like a switch!

PAUL: If you say so.

YOU: Name the challenges, I’ll name the switches. Oh, and these techniques are all modulation eradicators. Just thought I’d mention that perk.

PAUL: Okay: Point of view, the moment, characters that speak like real people and most importantly, emotional commitment to the subtext.

YOU: Direction #2 covers all those bases: Hold back, hold back, hold back; don’t let the words out easily.

PAUL: You have some explaining to do.

YOU: Well, that’s what You, ah, I am here for.

PAUL: Hold back suits all genres, comedy and drama?

YOU: One size fits all. And it’s physicalized like a switch, flick!

PAUL: So, axiomatically.

YOU: Hold back, you’re in the ballpark; pour forth, you’re out.

PAUL: You’ve got my attention.

YOU: When I catch my narrator la-dee-da modulating in a syncopated, smooth, or sing-song rhythm, where the micro spaces between each word and sentence are identical, I direct: Hold back! Don’t let those words come out easily, metronome-like, as if you know what you’re going to say in advance.

PAUL: So you’re directing the narrator who is speaking one word behind the other at the same pace to pause non-rhythmically.

YOU: More like choke off the next word or sentence, and do not speak it.

PAUL: Until?

YOU: The subtext is discovered.

PAUL: And literally holding back flicks that discovery switch?

YOU: That’s the technique.

PAUL: What triggers the emotional discovery?

YOU: Ask a neurologist. I only know that this physicalized technique forces narrators out of their inauthentic (because they’re merely rhythmically vocalizing words) comfort zone, and in those micro, held back moments, guess what pops through the text?

PAUL: The subtext.

YOU: Voila! And in those hesitated, non-articulated moments lurks point of view, the moment, discovery and a rhythm that more accurately represents the way real people speak.

PAUL: That’s storytelling.

YOU: You would say so!

PAUL: You did. So, let’s narrow our focus to drama.

YOU: Direction # 3: Flat, flat, flat.

PAUL: Not applicable to comedy?

YOU: No. It is a dramatic narrative’s best friend direction.

PAUL: Best friend?

YOU: Because, whether fiction or non-fiction, Flat, Flat, Flat simultaneously liberates organic emotion and eliminates PBES.

PAUL: PBES?

YOU: Phony Baloney Emphasis Syndrome.

PAUL: You mean non-organic modulation. How so?

YOU: First book my narrator recorded, all the words were reported, as if their emotionality had been surgically removed. Oh, myriad voice-over special effects, but no feeling. Psst! Try this: As you narrate, no emphasis.

PAUL: Not a single word?

YOU: Nada.

PAUL: But-

YOU: Boring? The absolute opposite.

PAUL: Really?

YOU: Flat, flat, flat deprives the narrator his reflexive lurch to PBES. And when the narrator is reeeaaally flat, it’s as if a trap door opens, revealing?

PAUL: The subtext.

YOU: Begging for connection.

PAUL: But what about emphasis?

YOU: See, flat, flat, flat isn’t an outcome whose endgame is speaking in a monotone. It’s an actable, storytelling technique that switches on organic subtext discovery and is simultaneously lights out to PBES.

PAUL: Bottom line: Each time narrators literally flatten the voice?

YOU: PBES scoots and the luscious subtext is revealed to be intuitively felt.

PAUL: So long as we’re on dramatic threes-

YOU: Direction #4: Less, Less, Less!

PAUL: Less what?

YOU: Volume, voice!

PAUL: Axiomatically.

YOU: Caution: Axiom risks one size fits all. But it also provides a palpable measure the actor can at least use to concretely regard the concept.

PAUL: Okay, then. Axiomatically!

YOU: Less is more.

PAUL: Kind of trite, no.

YOU: I stand by trite! Take a third person description of some unsuspecting lamb of a character about to be slow-mo sliced and diced by the scythe-wielding serial killer.

PAUL: There’s a ten on the dramatic stakes scale.

YOU: Ya think!

PAUL: So you, I mean You-

YOU: Yeah, yeah, I know.

PAUL: Right. You direct your narrator, how?

YOU: Les, less, less! Stage whisper if the stakes are threatening, painful, gruesome or just plain horrifyingly gross.

PAUL: Doesn’t less volume remove dramatic choices that demand volume?

YOU: The dead opposite!  Less voice opens more vocal choices, not fewer.

PAUL: Explain.

YOU: Remember, audio book narration occurs in a booth where the technology can tolerate limited volume. You can scream your brains out in a stage whisper, but not in full voice.

PAUL: So, listeners’ willing suspension of disbelief means that they will emotionally connect to a viscous, stage-whispered howl, even if the line says, ‘She screamed at the top of her lungs’?

YOU: Yes. Audio book storytelling is an intimate medium: So, you scream intimately.

PAUL: Full blast would disconnect the listener.

YOU: And deafen the engineer. Finally, less voice imagines drama’s aesthetic soul: Fear, suspense, anger, etc. Less voice is an actable technique that instantly warns: Uh-oh, something is up here, and it’s gruesome.

PAUL: What about comedy? Since time is short, your most potent comedy direction.

YOU: In threes.

PAUL: Natch!

YOU: Direction #5: Big, Big, BIG!

PAUL: Opposite of less.

YOU: Of course. Humor is predicated on intellectual recognition—of an event, human characteristic or foible, etc.—rather than empathy for what’s occurring.

PAUL: So big comes in where?

YOU: Big alerts us that even if a character is talking about murder, the author’s aesthetic request is an associative recognition that will hopefully tickle our funny bone, rather than cause us to empathize or feel. And, axiomatically-

PAUL: What else.

YOU: Broad means big, broader means bigger.

PAUL: Now translate in actable parlance.

YOU: The more exaggerated the narrative’s syntax, axiomatically, the more license the text gives the narrator to vocally exaggerate: Long, melodramatic pauses; heightened energy, exaggerated emphasis, etc.

PAUL: Non-fiction. What’s the fundamental actable direction that addresses this genre’s unique performance challenge?

YOU: Direction #6: Dispassionately teach passionately.

PAUL: Sounds cryptic.

YOU: I’ll open the crypt.

PAUL: Uh-huh.

YOU: Fiction emotionally connects character and story to listeners. Non-fiction connects only the author’s feelings about his narrative to listeners.

PAUL: How do you account for non-fiction’s powerful events and characters?

YOU: Right, but the non-fiction narrator’s only performance obligation is matching the author’s feelings about characters or events, not becoming the actual character or internalizing the event as fiction demands.

PAUL: So, is the non-fiction narrator still emotionally involved?

YOU: Absolutely! And here’s your actable trigger: Involved with the author’s need to teach this amazing story.

PAUL: Why teach?

YOU: Because that’s non-fiction’s performance purpose: Whether it’s 50 ways to leave your lover, the rise and fall of an empire or the next disruptive technology.

PAUL: Where’s the emotionality then?

YOU: The non-fiction narrator’s job-one is to imbue the narrative with the author’s passion to tell his story.

PAUL: Kind of like that great teacher we all had or wished we did.

YOU: Yes, and to be clear, dispassionately teach passionately directs the narrators’ passion away from involvement with the story and its characters and to the author’s need for this important story to be understood and appreciated by the listener.

PAUL: That’s it?

YOU: Oh, no!

PAUL: One last, all encompassing, ballpark direction.

YOU: For the turnstile to move—whether its comedy, drama, non-fiction.

PAUL: Drumroll!

YOU: Direction # 7: Up the stakes. Up, up, up.

PAUL: This is about performance commitment to storytelling, eh.

YOU: When my narrator fails to commit to the emotional stakes embedded in the narrative, we have a situation: WNA—Wet Noodle Acting. Trust You, nothing emotionally disconnects listeners more than WNA.

PAUL: The antidote to WNA?

YOU: If the stakes look like a 5, make ‘em an 8, an 8, make ‘em a 10, and a 10: Drop your socks and grab your-

PAUL: Hey, this is a family blog!

YOU: Then swing on the chandelier!

PAUL: What about over-commitment: Over-acting?

YOU: Over commitment occurs at about the same rate as having quadruplets. Too often WNA visits and stays like an unwelcome guest.

PAUL: Okay. How about a wrap-up tweet-count of actable directions? 

YOU: Verbalize feeling; Hold back; Flat; Less; Big; Dispassionately teach, passionately; Up the stakes!

PAUL: Whoo-hoo! Thank you, You.

YOU: Isn't that redundant.

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I’m looking forward to my upcoming NY and LA Narrator’s workshop and, despite the demands of my MFA creative writing program, to trying to keep up with regular blog posts. In the future I hope to explore possible relationships between creating narrative fiction and performing it: Some interesting similarities, I think.