Have you ever been excited to start a new audiobook, only to find that you didn’t have the stamina to endure listening to the narrator speak for eight hours? We’ve all been there. Narrating is an art. A good voice actor can put you in the book, making you feel like you’re in the orphanage with Jane Eyre or the Chamber of Secrets with the “Boy Who Lived.” When you download audio books with great narrators, you may even find that you enjoy pulling weeds or commuting to work. But what makes a great narrator?
Authentic
A good narrator is true to the characters. This includes gender, accents, and time-period. Does the male narrator reading Anne Shirley’s dialogue sound out of breath? This is a trap that many male narrators fall into when voicing female characters. Anne’s character is anything but weak, but yet a breathy voice can undermine her vibrant personality and make her seem timid.
Everyone loves a good accent. Good accents can make the character more authentic and take you to the place and era where the book is set. But a bad accent can completely ruin a book. A good narrator knows when to, and more importantly, when not to use an accent.
Consistency
As I’m sure everyone reading this knows, audiobooks are not narrated in their entirety in one sitting. Narrators will take bathroom breaks, eat lunch, and run to the grocery store halfway through a book. While necessary, this can sometimes cause distracting variations in volume, pitch, tone, etc. Narrators don’t always remember how close to the microphone they were before lunch. But a good narrator will try to maintain a certain set of guidelines that are consistently followed.
Additionally, if you’re going to do an accent or gendered voices, commit to it. Narrators should maintain consistency in dialects, voices, etc. throughout the duration of the book.
Engaging
Have you ever listened to a narrator and thought maybe they loved their job a little too much? And on the flip side, have you ever thought the narrator hated everything about the book they were reading? When a narrator enjoys when they’re doing, changes in volume, pitch, and tone feel natural. When there’s emotion behind the narrator’s words, the book feels real.
In the end, a bad narrator is distracting. If you download audio books and the narrator is taking away from the book, rather than adding to it, they aren’t doing their job. In contrast, a good narrator can take a yawner and make it engaging, exciting, and leave you sobbing in your car in the office parking lot. At Audiobooks Now we understand the importance of good narrating. Browse our collection today.
