The Loneliness of The Audiobook Narrator

I was very happy with how the recording went that day. The challenge was to render a scene from World War II. A group of Wehrmacht soldiers were attempting to escape their pursuers on the frozen wastelands of the Eastern Front. In addition to narrating the scene in 1stperson I was also portraying 5 different characters all gripped in their own way by the immediacy of death. To play such a scene in one take all by yourself is no mean feat. Doing this sort of thing is why audiobook narration is so fiendishly difficult to do well. 

As I hit stop to finish the chapter (after recording the obligatory 30 seconds of silent room-tone to help my editor) I felt a kind of elation. The kind that comes when you were fully connected up in the moment of creativity. The moment when you justify your invoice! The moment that earns you applause from your audience. Except, for an audiobook narrator directing themselves in a home studio…there is no audience. There is no response. There is just...you. 

Any artist is driven by the desire to connect with an audience. For it is between artist and audience that magic happens. That intangible, invisible connection that unites all the people in the room in feeling something amazing. Whether it is the sense of other-worldly magic that draws a patron in an art gallery to Van Gogh’s matchless post-impressionism. Or the extraordinarily personal connection between the late, great Freddie Mercury and his audience; narcissism and humility rolled into a ball of electric energy. Or even the visceral thrill I felt sitting with my son in a cinema earlier this summer as Captain America growled: “Avengers…Assemble!”

To find out how I deal with the stranger loneliness of audiobook narration read on here.  Don't forget you can subscribe to my blog by visiting: www.samdevereaux.co.uk