Audiobooks, continued

 

 

Last night’s frelling chapter?  It got LONGER.  Not that this is unfamiliar behaviour from something I’m trying to write* BUT EVEN SO.  So no, I haven’t got to the end of it.  So today’s blog is Short Wednesday in a Week of Shorts.**

Now about audiobooks.  You need to remember that I have a bad attitude . . . toward almost everything.  I have a powerful native gift for cranky anyway but it’s also a kind of self-protection.  After you’ve rendered yourself a gibbering . . . thing that gibbers*** trying to write your story THE VERY BEST YOU ARE CAPABLE OF while despairingly aware that it’s not good enough† . . . you then have to sit back and pretend to relax WHILE THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY DOES ITS BEST TO DESTROY THE FRELLER.  Well, that’s how it feels.  To me.  I told you I had a bad attitude.  But no one has your vision of your story—they can’t.  And the whole ‘what sells’ thing makes pretty much everyone involved cranky, and at some point, and preferably before your editor has decided to have you killed, you have to let them get on with it.  I can’t take the strain, pretty much, which is why I get farther and farther out of the whole publishing biz world.  Here’s my story, I say at intervals.  Um.  I hope you like it.  I hope you publish it.  And I hope what you do to it in the process doesn’t make me want to retrain as a Dyno Rod Woman.††

So.  Audiobooks.  I know they are a Good Thing in theory.  I even listen to them myself occasionally—not my own, mind you, but other people’s.  I entirely agree it’s a good way to get some knitting done.  But my experience of being audiobooked is a little aggrieved.

In my experience the audiobook company rarely wants to mess with you:  you’ll only complicate their lives.  And possibly vice versa.  For example, I was once given a choice of three readers.  I listened to the clips they sent me and . . . hated them all.   After much writhing and doorsill chewing I chose the least ghastly . . . who turned out to be unavailable.  The company chirpily informed me that they had taken an executive decision . . . and hired the one (not that I had told them this) I loathed the most.  I never listened to the result.  I’ve never listened to any of my audiobooks.  I don’t want to know.

SShadow

I was surprised by the narrator’s pronunciation in The Blue Sword (mostly of Damarian words . .. .

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.  They probably are mispronounced.  Don’t tell me.

 Corlath doesn’t have quite the same power when read in a female narrator’s “man voice,” but I suppose there’s nothing to be done about that.

Sigh.  Yes, I think that part’s true.  And I never think having different voices in what is essentially a read-aloud works.  Either you have to semi-stage the thing or you have a single reader-aloud, and you have to hope they can adapt enough to the varying demands of the story.

EMoon

You might reassure Peter that Audible are serious and actually want assistance from the writer, as they get complaints when listeners don’t like the voice, or feel it gets an accent or characterization wrong.

Noted.  Dubiously.  It’s a nice thought.  But I am a frelling Audible subscriber and . . . they don’t always get it right by a long shot.   And how many of us have to complain before they rerecord something they’ve got wrong?

A voice actor I know casually commented that actors like input from writers…they want to convey the feel of the language (and especially when they have a good writer’s work to present. The same voice actor was voicing some badly-written romances and said it was driving her crazy.)

I wish all us like-minded professionals ever were on the same bandwagon at the same time.  I keep hearing fairy tales of things like actors who want input from writers and I’m like . . . what?  Peter has had contacts from some of his translators too, wanting more info about stuff they’re finding hard to translate (mind you I think Peter is unusually challenging, both for reading aloud and for translating).  Not me.  I don’t really want to know about the quality of my translations either . . . since there’s not a frelling thing I can do about it/them, either than gnaw my own flesh till I bleed.

Diane in MN

I’m a big fan of audiobooks; it’s nice to think that authors get some input into the way their work is going to sound.

AAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH.  See previous.

Gwyn_sully

Having a good reader makes such a difference!

Doesn’t it just.  Yes.  A good readaloud is like suddenly finding yourself in a warm bath with a glass of cold champagne within reach somewhere you aren’t going to knock it over at the end of a hard day.  Although you’re probably knitting or having Lap Socialisation with a hellterror or possibly hurtling, the warm-bath-with-champagne effect is discernible.

I’ve listened to books by authors I’ve never heard of before simply because they were narrated by someone I like. Since I tend to get into reading ruts it’s a good way to get me to branch out a bit.

Hmm.  I’m comparatively new to audiobooks–and still in the Ooooh!  Must listen to this next! stage.  I’ll have to add this concept to the list.

. . . . See, I’m not hopelessly hopeless and negative and close-minded and CRANKY.  Just nearly.  Especially when I’m being driven crazy by a self-extending chapter.

Back to the frelling grindstone.

* * *

* Let us not forget that the PEGASUS TRILOGY^ started as a short story.

^ Note that if it turns out to be more than three books I’m going to sign up with the Witness Relocation Programme and move to Mars.

** And speaking of shorts it’s supposed to get HOT again this weekend.  NOOOOOOOO.  I was just beginning to get used to wearing long trousers again.  Also although it’s cooler the so-called air is thick as a brick.  Total headache weather.  Not ideal among other things for thrashing mutinous chapters into obedient coherence.

*** ‘Idiot’ doesn’t really fulfil the gibberingness of it.  You want a whole treeful of angry howler monkeys or the despairing crowd at the end of Stave One of A Christmas Carol when Marley’s ghost goes to join the supernatural throng.

† It might also bear repeating, with some reference to last night’s blog . . . those of you with stories in progress that you just can’t manage to do what you want/need to do with . . . remember the brain and heart energy thing.  If you’ve got a busy life, a demanding job, maybe a family with a few kids or six dogs or a horse farm or something . . . it may not be that you have no skill or talent for writing.  It may be that you’re too tired or too elsewhere-demanded to do well by your story (or your poem or your four-storey welded-steel sculpture) too.

†† And we aren’t going near any question of reviewers.