Is reading out loud hard?
This post has been sitting in my “stewing” folder a while. Time to bring it out.
So…I was reading Neil Gaiman’s blog this morning and apparently he has recorded a new and unabridged audiobook of Neverwhere… I am a little bit wary of this, as I am a little bit wary of all audiobooks-read-by-the-author because reading aloud is hard to do properly and many people (myself included) do not manage it properly.
Say again? Reading aloud… is hard? Good thing no one told that to my mom when I was tiny. She must have have tirelessly worked through the obstacles, struggling to have the words on the paper transform into sound vibrations as she fought with her lungs, lips and tongue in a valiant effort to… you know… speak.
OK, I’m willing to admit that the author of this post probably didn’t mean to infer that reading out loud is difficult, and that he (or she) really meant to say that giving a proper vocal performance of the written word is not without its challenges. And I’d concur with that. But we’re not talking about piloting an F-14 here. Audiobooks do not, and should not, come with the label: Warning. This reading was performed by a trained professional under laboratory conditions. Do not try this at home or serious maiming may result. People have been reading aloud and performing for others for the past tens of thousands of years. Yes, I see the place for trained actors — voice or otherwise. Do they make it better? The certainly can. Does everyone possess the innate ability to effectively deliver spoken performances? Probably not. But to automatically discount the quality of work based on the lack of a pedigree… seems rather limiting.
March 14th, 2007 at 9:22 am
Reading out loud isn’t hard, reading out loud without talking too fast, mumbling, stumbling over words, pronouncing words you’re not used to pronouncing, and a bunch of other stuff, is a lot harder than most people think. Sure, with practice and concentration you can over come that but sometimes it’s not easy.
March 14th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
As an audiobook narrator, I agree with the original post and Tim’s reply to this message. Reading aloud is not hard in the sense that lives aren’t hanging in the outcome or the balance of world power won’t shift with every utterance. However, lifting sentences off the printed page and breathing life into them so that they flow effortlessly while maintaining the author’s perspective is an acquired skill.
I know how to write words. I can use a pen and paper to form words, or I can type very fast on my computer in a word processing program. I constantly use this ability to write in order to produce a variety of things: proposals for voice-over projects, blog posts, letters to friends and family, etc.
Yet I would say that writing a novel is hard. (There’s that word again.) Writing a novel that becomes a published work of material seems even more difficult. How many people say they would like to write a novel, and how many people actually DO it? To become a published novelist such as Mr. Gaiman, one must have tremendous energy and focus. One must be able to take an ordinary skill that most people possess, like the ability to write words, and be able to string those words together in a fashion that would interest other people enough to want to pay to read them. I haven’t been able to do it. Writing a novel therefore seems like hard work to me.
I can understand the original poster’s view about being wary of audiobooks performed by the author. Audiobook narration is a performance, that, like the printed book, will last forever. It’s not like a child’s mother reading a bedtime story where the main goal is to lull the listener to sleep. Neither the child nor the mother care about the quality of the reading.
Audiobook listeners, on the other hand, DO care about the quality of the narration. Audiobooks are an intimate medium. The reason people enjoy reading so much is because their imagination is running the movie of the words in their head. A good audiobook narrator can make the audio version of a book seem like a movie, where someone who is not as adept at this type of performance can ruin the experience for the listener.
A good narrator will make the performance transparent and SEEM like the easiest thing on earth….just like talking. However, good narrators usually have completed professional training in voice-over and also have thoroughly prepared the material they are reading by researching pronunciations and determining characterizations before they ever walked into the recording studio.
Karen Commins
www.AVOICEAboveTheCrowd.com
www.KarenBlogs.com