{"id":5452,"date":"2016-03-23T08:04:53","date_gmt":"2016-03-23T12:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5452"},"modified":"2016-03-23T08:04:53","modified_gmt":"2016-03-23T12:04:53","slug":"polishing-your-instrument-your-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5452","title":{"rendered":"Polishing Your Instrument: Your Voice"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_5453\" style=\"width: 249px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5453\" class=\" wp-image-5453\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/microphone.jpg?resize=239%2C228\" alt=\"microphone\" width=\"239\" height=\"228\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/microphone.jpg?w=444&amp;ssl=1 444w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/microphone.jpg?resize=150%2C143&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/microphone.jpg?resize=300%2C286&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/microphone.jpg?resize=314%2C300&amp;ssl=1 314w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 239px) 100vw, 239px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-5453\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">(photo: Pete on Flickr, public domain)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Last Friday actor and writer Alex Adams led an informal seminar for local writers on reading their fiction aloud, effectively and entertainingly. He described ways to create meaningful vocal variety and illustrated his points with excerpts of recordings created for \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.selectedshorts.org\/\">Selected Shorts<\/a>.\u201d As an avid reader of audiobooks, I appreciate how much a reader contributes to the impact of a tale.<\/p>\n<p>Alex writes specifically for live audiences and regularly presents his stories and sketches in various venues in New York. As a member of the writing group I belong to, he helps us get ready for our own much less frequent public readings (see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vweisfeld.com\/?p=5446\">yesterday\u2019s post<\/a> about the benefits of reading your work out loud).<\/p>\n<p>Over the years, he\u2019s developed a method for marking up his copy that helps him achieve the most effective read. By practicing the marked-up copy numerous times, these vocal changes become as integral to the piece as punctuation. He suggested that authors mark up the copy they\u2019re going to read to indicate:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Pauses<\/em>. Alex uses a check mark in the places where a brief pause will allow a moment of dramatic tension, time for a joke to settle, or the chance to take a breath\u2014you don\u2019t want to run out of air!<\/li>\n<li><em>Pacing<\/em>. You may want to read some passages\u2014for example, explanatory words and phrases\u2014more quickly, and others\u2014such as the introduction of an important new character\u2014more slowly. \u201cChange-of-pace\u201d is synonymous with preventing monotony!<\/li>\n<li><em>Emphasis<\/em>. He underlines critical words and phrases one, two, or even three times to make sure he gives them the attention they need. You can emphasize words by rising volume or pitch or both.<\/li>\n<li><em>Special attention<\/em>. He circles words that are important, need very clear articulation, are easily misunderstood, or that give him trouble in practice. Taking the trouble to say a few words extra clearly helps it stick in the listener\u2019s mind.<\/li>\n<li><em>Dialog<\/em>. While amateur readers don\u2019t need to go overboard in trying to mimic various characters\u2019 speech, some differentiation helps the listener know who\u2019s speaking. <a href=\"http:\/\/bookriot.com\/2015\/12\/02\/hey-audiobooks-thats-not-women-sound-like\/?utm_source=Book+Riot+Subscriptions&amp;utm_campaign=b93c4197db-RIOTRUNDOWN_SUNDAY&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_ffcca77bbb-b93c4197db-320350249&amp;mc_cid=b93c4197db&amp;mc_eid=8d5c6b7c97\">Jessica Woodbury<\/a> in <em>Bookriot<\/em> recently complained about audiobook readers (male) who pitch the female characters\u2019 voices too high and make them all sound breathily the same. This is not only unnatural, she says, but \u201cThey become inferior characters in the telling of the story.\u201d Alex edits his manuscript to look more like a play script so that, as he\u2019s reading, he doesn\u2019t lose track of which character is speaking.<\/li>\n<li><em>Freestyle<\/em>. Any additional annotations meaningful to yourself and the piece you\u2019re reading.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Alex\u2019s presentation made me think of audiobooks that exemplified his points. One is Herman Koch\u2019s <em>The Dinner<\/em>, narrated by Clive Mantle, a story in which the first-person narrator is deeply jealous of his successful brother. Because of the way Mantle always carefully articulated the brother\u2019s name\u2014Serge Lohman\u2014loathing just dripped off it.<\/p>\n<p>Another good example (and another terrific book) was Ben Fountain\u2019s <em>Billy Lynn\u2019s Long Halftime Walk<\/em>, narrated by Oliver Wyman. At first I thought the reader wasn\u2019t doing much, but he grew on me, perfectly capturing the main character\u2019s puzzlement, sadness, hope, fear. This book isn\u2019t about a larger-than-life hero, it was Billy\u2019s ordinariness that made it so heartbreaking.<\/p>\n<p>In total contrast to these insightful narrations, imagine my bafflement when I listened to a post-recording interview with Ralph Cosham, audiobook reader of Louise Penny\u2019s Chief Inspector Gamache mysteries. He said he likes to discover her books along with the listener. As a result, he never reads them before sitting down in the recording studio! Totally winging it may work for him, but the rest of us have to practice in order to mine the rich possibilities inherent in our own voices.<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 120px; height: 240px;\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ss&amp;ref=as_ss_li_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=victoweisf-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=B00B3Z69PQ&amp;asins=B00B3Z69PQ&amp;linkId=9b274075ed4c5b5f0be479853ccab6f0&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 120px; height: 240px;\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ss&amp;ref=as_ss_li_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=victoweisf-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=B007Z969H2&amp;asins=B007Z969H2&amp;linkId=3ebef3615f40cfd42296375001ad88d6&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last Friday actor and writer Alex Adams led an informal seminar for local writers on reading their fiction aloud, effectively and entertainingly. He described ways to create meaningful vocal variety and illustrated his points with excerpts of recordings created for &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5452\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Polishing Your Instrument: Your Voice - tips for authors giving readings of their works","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[62,174,60],"tags":[89,28],"class_list":["post-5452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-first-draft-blog","category-storytelling","tag-reading","tag-writers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1pW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5454,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5452\/revisions\/5454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}