Audio Book Month – Page 4

Johnny Heller is a narrator of audio books and as all narrators, considers himself an actor. With over 500 narrations, Johnny has narrated in almost all genres.

Johnny started his narrating career in the 90’s and holds to his name these (as well as many other narrations):

MASH
Marley and Me
The Mickey Rawlins Baseball Murder Mysteries by Troy Soos
THE GRIMM CONCLUSION.
the Platypus Police Squad series
The Horrible Harry books
The Vampire Files series by PN Elrod,
Dan Gutman baseball card time travel books
DAVE BARRY’S COMPLETE GUIDE TO GUYS
The NERDS series
BACK IN THE FIGHT
SHOT ALL TO HELL
HOUSE OF LIES
CLOSING TIME
THE LAST STRIPTEASE
THE FAT MAN – A Tale of North Pole Noir
The Perks Of Being A Wallflower

When asked about the similarities between Narration and narrating, Johnny responds,

Audio book narration IS acting. People will often ask me -“are you still acting?” Of course I am! I don’t know that there is a more organic acting form than the audiobook narration. You have a script – the book; an audience; and you.

The major difference between stage and screen and the audio art is that the narrator plays all the roles. I am not – when narrating reacting to cues or the immediate response from an audience or playing camera angles or scenes as plotted by a director. The narrator is a story-teller. The narrator must be immersed in the truth of the author and faithful moment to moment to the text. It is essential that I share the author’s truth.

In a theater piece, the actor plays a single character and he immerses himself in the life of that one character. In narration, the actor (still acting!) plays the narrator and all of the characters – giving each one life as dictated by the authors’ truth which we get from the text. Each character has his/her own traits and the narrator must be adept making choices that propel the story forward. A flawed or faulty choice will halt the narrative flow because it disconnects the actor and therefore the audience from the authors truth.

It’s a very risky thing to narrate a book and one must make choices and one must be an actor with a gift for storytelling.

Johnny personally will read through a book once prior to narrating to get a feel for the voice of the book.

As I read, I make a list of characters and next to the character I note whatever I need to write to tell me who that character is. Is she mean, sweet…if I was casting it for a film, who would I pick. Is this guy a Clint Eastwood type or a Jon Cryer type? I make notes that may not make sense to somebody else but tell me what I need to know to help me make appropriate choices.

The hardest books to narrate according to Johnny are the ones that are emotionally wrenching. Out of his personal narrations he mentions Marley and Me,and A Day No Pigs Will Die. He especially is proud of an amazing book called The Education Of Little Tree. Written so beautifully he says, that he was brought to tears several times while narrating.

When asked if there are any “tricks of the trade, Johnny responded:

I have a few “tricks” although I’m not sure I’d call them that. I always have some tissues with me. Not just for tears! but you never really know what’s gonna come out of your body at any given moment until you are in a booth hoping for quiet!

I recommend remaining hydrated.

A slice of apple can keep your mouth moist (without being slushy) and settle those stomach noises.

When you find your mind wandering during your recording to things like: “hmmmm, I wonder what we’re gonna have for dinner” or “I really gotta do the laundry today…” YOU NEED A BREAK! I frequently step out of the booth and just take a few moments and not think about the project. Just to clear my head. If you find yourself wandering, you are not in touch with the text and you are not telling the story anymore.

And any mistake is fixable! Nothing is etched in stone — if you yawned, belched, yodeled – whatever, you can fix it, don’t worry. But note it because you really must fix it!

Check out more about Johnny on his website: www.johnnyheller.com

Please watch this site for June audio book related posts. For every post you comment on in June that has this audio book symbol:

I will put you into a drawing for a $25 book certificate for each comment (Barnes and Noble or Amazon – your choice). Winner will be drawn in July.

June is Audiobook Month. A time when we celebrate Audiobooks, Narrators, Great Audio, and more. If you read reviews here at Book Journey you know I listen to A LOT OF AUDIO. That was not always the case. In fact, there was a time I thought audiobooks were so geeky….

My Aunt and Uncle live in California. Every spring they bring a large RV back to Minnesota and stay with my other Aunt and Uncle here in Brainerd on their property until October. For their trek from California to Minnesota…. they listen to audio. One time I had to get something out of their RV I went in and seen this huge box of audio cassette tapes (bear with me… this was a while ago 😉 ). UGH I thought, how could you just listen to audio for hours on end? They must REALLY BE OLD. (yeah… I am not proud).

About 4 years ago I was offered audiobooks for review. I thought I would give one a try, and put it in my cars CD player. My world has never been the same. I fell in love with a story, and finished a book over the next couple of weeks while driving. Then I started listening to it while cooking, and cleaning, and mowing, and gardening, and playing scrabble on line…

Note: All audio is not AWESOME audio

You might be thinking “But Sheila, I tried audio once and I could not get into it. I can not handle someone reading to me!”

Good audio, as I recently discussed with Narrator Karen White, does not give you the feel that someone is reading to you. Good audio… makes you forget that… good audio, you never hear the narrator reading, instead you fall into the story, much like when you watch a tv show you do not focus that the actor is acting.