If it hasn’t become clear to blog readers yet, “The Studio Audience” is me.
In this endeavor of learning how to do audiobooks, I am my own Producer, Actor, Director, Editor, and Marketer. I’m the only person with skin in this game, so especially when I am editing my narration, I work on several levels simultaneously. (I suspect this is part of why it takes so long.)
As I edit, I reflect, and learn, and try to figure out how to implement what I find in what I hear. I edited all weekend. I will continue to edit all this week in the hopes of having the book done by month-end.
The good part is that I am having a breakthrough about feedback I received from an instructor last year. I recall it clearly but it made little sense at the time: Don’t forget you are telling a story. Find the main thread that you can follow all the way through.
I absolutely did not understand this. Yes, it is a story. Viola’s perspective is the main thread. It is a mystery. What do I DO DIFFERENTLY with those things? No matter how many times I asked her questions to try to clarify, her meaning was not TACTICAL enough for me to know what to DO to make that happen.
JUST NOW (3 books later), I believe I understand, in part, what she means: Stop Returning to Neutral Base. Now I have to explain “Neutral Base” and this post is already taking more time than I wanted, but this is important for my development, so here goes.
“Neutral Base” for the Viola Roberts Cozy Mysteries is Viola’s inner dialog. Her voice is my snarky voice in “talk back” mode (the one that earned me a constant admonition, “don’t you talk back to me.”) Outwardly, when she speaks, Viola is curious but emotionally guarded, observant but a pro at self-denial. Inwardly, when she speaks, Viola is loving but judgemental, takes no shit, gives no fucks, but gets her thrills from everyday melodrama.
When the text calls for, “He said,” “She said,” and any paragraphs of description or exposition, those occur in what I have been labeling in my head “Neutral Base” or internal monologue Viola.
Now, as you might be imagining (or remembering, depending on when the last time was that you read a book aloud) there’s some fancy vocal work that happens when switching back and forth between “voices.” It is physically hard work, and work that is done with minute shifts of the breath, the mouth, the body, and the unsung hero: the ears. Because if you’re not listening, you can’t tell if you went from Cheryl’s line to Viola’s response, and then to Neutral Base Viola for inner thoughts.
Up to now, I’ve been working on getting to a place where returning to neutral base is CONSISTENT. Just consistent. Always Viola’s inner voice. Viola’s narrator voice, her inner dialog with herself, her ownership of the story being told by her in 1st person. Making sure that every narration, every attribution, always returns to 1st person inner monologue. Trying to get to the point where I drop easily back to neutral base.
It is jarring for the attributions to be neutral. It sounds weird. I know it does, because I was just listening. In this chapter, Viola’s base voice is more neutral than normal because there are SO MANY other voices. When I was recording, I was afraid of not keeping the voices clearly distinct enough from each other. Probably because of my worry, the return to base became more mechanical—very neutral—as I focused on making the extra voices right.
Viola’s base voice can’t be that way. She carries too much of the narrative. It always needs to have an opinion or attitude or sense of telling the story, even when she is just saying, “Beth said,” or “Lin said,” or even, “I said.” Sure, those attributions are the sudden vocal shifts that need to be clearly in Viola’s base voice, but they can’t be neutral. When they are neutral, they take the listener out of the story. The listener suddenly hears me, the narrator, being inadvertently lazy.
I didn’t understand it. But now I can hear it. So Painful.
The equivalent of an auditory typo. Chapter 7 sounds like I let a four-year-old type my term paper on a vintage typewriter.
I am sure that much of the time, because my instincts for this work are not bad, I don’t actually return to what I’ve been thinking of as “neutral” base. Most of the time, I probably keep Viola’s attitude, her opinions, her participation in the dialog, coloring the attribution and description. But when hyper-focused on an aspect of the technical performance; in this case keeping 7 female characters sounding different, while they all talk to each other, within one 10 minute chapter…Well, Viola sounds flat. And if you’ve heard any of the books, you know she is anything but flat.
Luckily, I have more chances to do better. In the next book, I will test my theory; see if processing this in a written form makes a difference in the next book.
Just figuring it out feels good.
Probably as good as Viola feels each time she catches a killer.
What do you think?