An Inexpensive Voice Coaching Option

Doing your own reading for the audio recording of your book is definitely not for the faint of heart. I’m learning that speaking stamina is required if I want to produce a solid audio book. And, the voice preparation officially starts this week. Actually, the unofficial prep began a couple of weeks ago when I started reading 30 – 45 minute daily intervals with my 9-year-old, Little Man.

Now, Little Man has a weekly reading goal that he strives to meet as a participant in his school’s Accelerated Reader program, so he’s regularly reading books on a continuous basis. When he completes one, he promptly starts in on another one. And, it’s been pretty easy to keep his reading interest ablaze as he found an enjoyable well-known series, known as the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney, to consume. Once the first book reeled him in, then he was set on reading all the books until he exhausted the series.

He blew through this fan fave quickly in the first nine weeks of school, which left him with a choice to make on a new series to begin for this second nine weeks. And what do you know? He found one, a series that is a higher reading level group of books. Because this series’ level of complexity provides some challenges for Little Man, I’ve been pretty active in helping him with the reading. We take turns reading the pages of Gordon Korman’s series of books (Swindle, Zoobreak, Framed, Showoff, and Hideout). That way, Little Man gets a bit of a break between his reading sessions with an even mixture of out loud and silent reading. We’ve read Showoff and we’re currently reading Hideout (all 275 pages of it).

Not only does reading a stretch-goal book help Little Man with learning new words, vocabulary, and context clue practice, but it’s also warming my voice up for the recording of my audio book for Playground Instruction for the Growing Adult.  Without realizing it, I’ve been prepping for my recording day by simply reading to my son. While reading to him, I’m focusing on mastering such voice training techniques as:

• making sure my voice isn’t monotone and putting inflection in the voice when excited (as in an exclamation sentence), at the end of asking a question (as in a question sentence), and throughout the text as appropriate.
• breathing naturally and pausing at punctuation such as commas, periods, dashes, ellipses, and points of emphasis in the book.
• working the vocals and making sure they sound strong throughout. (Eating and drinking the appropriate items before using your vocals for an extended period is helpful. Also, having water on hand while reading is a must-have.)
• reading in intervals (with breaks in between) until the book is completely read.
• changing my voice to reflect different characters and their dialogue in the book. (Since my non-fiction has no back-and-forth character interaction, then this vocal technique won’t play a part in my audio book.)
• controlling the tempo of my speaking — not too fast and not too slow.
• making sure to enunciate my words without overdoing it or making the words seem unnatural.
• using a conversational tone as my non-fiction book is written like I’m having a chat with you.
• displaying the emotions of characters through words. (Again, this technique comes into play more so in the fiction space rather than the non-fiction. Although my book is non-fiction, I can easily see myself utilizing this technique in certain statements that I’m emphasizing to the reader.)
• PRACTICING, PRACTICING, and PRACTICING. Then, practicing some more. My book isn’t a long one, so I anticipate that I’ll get in several real-throughs before all is said and done.

I’ve heard several authors state that they worked with a voice coach before recording their audio book by having multiple one-on-one sessions or by recording an audio sample and then sending it off to a voice coach for critiquing. And if you guessed that my inexpensive option for voice coaching is to simply self-instruct, then you guessed right. I firmly believe that an author can prepare him or herself for the rigors of audio book creation. So, I’m going to take the techniques I use while reading my son’s library books out loud and apply them to my own book. I plan on practicing reading it out loud in sections throughout each week up to recording day to get my voice prepared for the real deal.