A Gift to Your Future Self: One step to add to your audiobook narration workflow
How often are you considering your Future Self when looking at your project management? I’m all about systems and routines that make Future Arielle’s life a little easier. A little extra effort today can be a huge gift to yourself later!
🎁 To that end, I’ve added one, 5-minute step to my audiobook narration routine that has organized my narration life and makes me “series surprise-proof.”
First of all, this additional step assumes you're already doing book prep and have good systems for managing your files.
📝 Audiobook prep includes writing out details about character names, accents/dialects, age and physical descriptions, vocal descriptions and other details the author provides or infers. These sorts of things inform the voice that I give to that character and my understanding of how to embody them for their interactions and experiences.
Depending on the book, I sometimes note plot points and interactions, pivotal scenes, ways relationships and emotions change throughout the story, and revelations being discovered. These serve as acting cues to me as the story progresses, and the notes can come in handy for more complex novels.
📓 I used to write this down in a journal, but realized the inconvenience of a physical book for my prep routine was prohibitive. I’d keep notes on my phone (Evernote, Keep, etc) but was inconsistent in format. Now, I track all of this using a spreadsheet and update it as I learn new information about the character through my prep read (before I start recording.) Some narrators swear by AirTable, but so far I’ve been content with Google Sheets, since my workflow involves a lot of Google products already.
A Little Time Spent Now is More Time Saved Later
🎙️ During the recording of the book, I create character samples of every character who speaks. I do this within my DAW (ProTools), and name my audio files so the character refs are easy to find with a few keystrokes. I have a muted track in my session I keep for ease of creating these samples. I select conversational audio from my active recording track, duplicate it in the muted track, consolidate several sections of these conversation samples (as well as narrative samples from my main character) and create the reference audio for that character.
🗄️ After I’ve completed my initial recording and turned in all of my raw audio files, I export all of my character audio references from my established named/known characters to a new standalone folder for that audiobook. That folder is nested inside my folder with my raw audio I’ve submitted to the producer, publisher or proofer (if it’s an indie project). I’ll review my prep file and make sure the info is complete for the book, including writing a short book summary, in case I hadn’t written chapter summaries, so at a glance I’ll know where the story left off.
I definitely haven’t always done this, so don’t feel bad if this sounds way more organized than what you’ve been doing! Having just turned in audio for my 161st book, I can finally say that I have a system that works and I’ll continue to refine my prep sheet. When any book comes back with a surprise sequel, I like knowing I’ll be prepared to jump right back into those characters and their story.