Voice Acting

Recording the audio edition for my book of fables is my first foray into voice acting. It’s been a fascinating and fun challenge, but I’m anxious about the results. If it was a nonfiction book, I think I’d find it pretty easy (I’ve done enough speaking and teaching to be comfortable with live reading.) But since it’s fiction, and there’s multiple characters in each story, I have to learn to perform to do unique and compelling voices.

Doing character voices is hard. I’ve done some funny voices for skit videos in the past. But you don’t wanna go to too wild with voices in an audiobook—you don’t want to get into cartoon territory.

You want the voices to be unique enough to tell apart when listening, convey some personality, but not too much personality or else it’ll sound cheesy. This is a tough balance to strike!

I’ve recorded four out of the seven fables in the book thus far, and feel like I’ve figured out the process and have some good momentum. I know by the end I’ll have learned a lot about voice acting. I have greater respect for all those voice actors out there—this ain’t easy!

One thing I realized that will help: Adding a bit of an accent to certain characters. I was trying too hard to stick to all of the same regional accent (“American” of some sort). This is actually pretty restrictive, as for example with the lake, a light British accent can really help differentiate that voice without having to get so low with the tone (could be sort of an old Gandalf style voice, or Merlin the wizard). I’m thinking now to one of my favorite movies, Disney’s animated film The Sword in the Stone, and the boy has an American-ish accent whereas Merlin the wizard is clearly British, but it works just fine.

I’m going to go back re-listen to each chapter’s recording so far, and see opportunities to elevate the individuality of each character a bit more with a little accent. Also I’m going to try my best to pay attention to the character’s mood and emotion in that moment, and channel that into the performance.

I’m also watching Nancy Cartwright’s (voice actor who voices Bart Simpson and many others) Masterclass on Voice Acting to get some more tips. I felt a bit overwhelmed that I’m now having to learn to voice act on top of all the drawing and writing learning I’m doing 😂 But hopefully just a little effort here and a re-record will do the trick. I don’t want to invest too many recording cycles on this audiobook, I’m trying to get this done within a few weeks, not a few months.

Hopefully with another a round of re-records, I’ll have an audiobook I’m happy with. It won’t be perfect, and certainly won’t be at the level of a professional voice actor, but it will still be something I can be proud of.

I’m confident that both children and adults will enjoy listening to it, and I think it’s a nice touch to know the author himself narrated it. I hope you feel the same way, and I’m excited for you to hear it soon!