Preparation
This is an article I wrote for the November 2004 edition of Audio News, the newsletter of the Audio Publishing Association.
At the beginning of July 2004 I recorded my 300th audiobook. Almost all of those books were unabridged. Someone (with nothing better to do!) worked out that if you started to play the first book I ever recorded at 12.00 midnight on January 1st and then played the rest of them non-stop, one after the other, I’d still be chuntering on in May!!! Ghastly thought!
The industry has changed such a lot since I started twenty years ago. When I recorded my 50th (the excellent Wall Games by Michael Dobbs) the company I recorded for gave me a party with champagne and a cake in the shape of a book. By the time I got to my 100th the company’s two studios were working flat out and the place was abuzz with activity. The boss came up to me in the corridor as I headed for the studio. “I understand it’s your 100th” he said. “It is,” I beamed, thinking perhaps there’d be more champagne. “Well done,” he replied as he headed off down the corridor.
It’s a wonderful job, of course. Like being in a radio play where you get to play all the parts; where you are the director, casting director and, in a sense, the set-designer. A friend once told me what a cushy job I had “sitting in front of a microphone all day telling stories.” The job is lots of things but I wouldn’t have thought “cushy” was one of them although once you get to the microphone a lot of the work has been done.
For me the secret of good narration is simple: Preparation! Preparation! Preparation! I’m always amazed that the question I’m most asked when I go around the country talking about what I do is: “Do you have to read the book first?” It’s rather like going up to an actor after the first night of a play and asking:“Did you rehearse?”
Preparation is time-consuming (time we are not paid for, incidentally) : a Patrick O’Brian book, for example, can take days just checking pronunciations. And writers don’t exactly make it easy for us. Recently I’ve had to track down people to help me with Cornish (the language not the accent), Anglo-Saxon and Norwegian. When I realised that I was going to get a series of Donna Leon’s Brunetti books to record, I decided that rather than check the Italian pronunciation every time, it was best to do a basic course in Italian. Likewise with the Alvarez books, set in Mallorca. Since recording them, my Catalan has improved no end!
I know some readers rely on their producers to check pronunciation but I find that if I have Greek phrases to read, say, as I do in the next book I’m to record, then it’s best to practise them so that, when I come to record, those same phrases trip of the tongue.
I have only once had to admit defeat: In one of the earliest Alvarez books, the murderer uses a mushroom-like fungus that’s only found on Mallorca. The word started with a double l and was, to me, unpronounceable. I phoned the Spanish tourist office; a friend in Mallorca who works in the catering industry, and finally the Mallorcan Chamber of Trade. No luck. No one knew how to pronounce the word. In the end I had to phone Roderic Jeffries, the writer of the book, who lives on the island. I reminded him of the plot, spelt out the word and waited with pen poised. “How do you pronounce it?” “I’ve no idea,” he said. “I made it up!”
As I head for my 307th, I remind myself how lucky I am. In the last twelve months alone I’ve recorded books by (among others): Gogol, Thackeray, Chris Ryan, JG Ballard, Donna Leon, John Harvey, Beryl Bainbridge, Adam Baron and David Lodge. Where else would an actor get such a variety of roles? Roll on 400!
Gordon Griffin 2004
