Voice actors are essentially translators but instead of language, we’re translating mediums. Our goal is to faithfully transform a story crafted from an author’s written words into a performance.
That’s huge… we’re essentially changing the audience’s EXPERIENCE of the story and that requires some serious preparation. The process of preparing a story for narration involves an understanding of the text, developing an intimate awareness of the characters involved, and tailoring a performance that best serves both.
Let’s start with the text.
Read as a Reader
Every story has its own “voice”, the essential tone and flavor of the tale. In order to create a compelling performance, the voice actor needs to understand and embrace that voice.
The first step for me is to read the work as a reader, paying attention to my emotional response to the story. I feel this is absolutely essential because it’s my responsibility to make sure the audience experiences those same responses. Those narrative keynotes become the foundation around which I’m going to build my performance.
Find the Rhythm
Every story has its own unique rhythm defined by 1) the significant events that drive the story forward, and 2) the manner in which they are presented. Those events are the “beats” of a story and they’re the anchor points for your performance. The style of their presentation informs how you’ll deliver those beats.
Identify the Beats
There are essentially four types of story beats I watch for…
Discovery
Learning something significant about the world or the characters – information that supports the story’s core theme –is a beat. The audience needs to know this information to appreciate the story, and it’s the voice actor’s job to make sure it sticks in their awareness.
Revelation
Revelation is when something assumed to be one thing is revealed as another. This changes the emotional terrain, raises the stakes, and often alters the course of the story itself. The performance of these moments can increase the tension and sharpen the audience’s interest in what’s happening.
Conflict
Characters overcoming obstacles is the essence of storytelling. It’s the primary means by which the audience will determine a character’s value as a protagonist (or antagonist), so those moments deserve special attention from the narrator.
Resolution
Stories are often a series of try/fail cycles as characters strive for their dreams and in the process become worthy to achieve them. Each resolution of that cycle – successful or not – is significant and their performance will profoundly impact the audience’s engagement with the tale.
Find the Voice
The beats are your vocal roadmap, but how do you move the audience along that story path? What’s the voice of the story and how do you, as a voice actor, embody it in your performance.
There are as many answers to those questions as there are voice actors to ask them. This is the true art of vocal performance so all I can do is share my personal strategies and instincts along these lines.
Language
First, I look at the language the author used to tell the story and the structure with which they organized it. Long sentences or short? Terse or descriptive? Expansive vocabulary or simple and direct? Stories are rarely just one thing, but examining the text will reveal a tendency towards one aspect or another.
A great example of this is David Nickle’s story “Knife Fight”. The language, structure, and syntax of this marvelous tale came together for me in a highly precise, almost exaggerated articulation.
“Knife Fight“, by David Nickle
The phrase “So it was” is very formal and proper. Using “no one” instead of “nobody” has a similar formality. That and other cues in the text led me to elevate the performance, almost like a doctoral presentation.
Culture
Most stories quickly orient the reader in terms of their social and cultural perspective and (just as importantly) the context from which the story presents that perspective. Is it providing a street view of the world or looking down from an exalted height? Is the setting common and familiar or strange and alien? Word choices and descriptions will go a long what towards determining your perspective here.
In J. Daniel Sawyer’s “Suave Rob’s Double X Daring Do”, the character of Gurgle Tippler is presented to the reader by the first-person narrator. That context, along with Gurgle’s colorful vocabulary, deeply informed my presentation of him.
Rob’s expectation of a “corncob pipe” and Gurgle’s vocabulary – like his use of “proper” instead of “properly” – all cultivated a sense of folksy, down-home decrepitude coupled with a stubborn, flint-hard disdain for the youth of the world (especially Rob and Jeff).
Context
The circumstances and environment of the story are defining factors when it comes to vocal performance. What the characters are doing and how they do it (and their attitude towards the task at hand) will color the delivery of the text.
In Desmond Warzel’s radio play “On a Clear Day You Can See All the Way to Conspiracy”, the main character is a veteran talk radio host who is about to have a very strange day on the air. In order to contrast that strangeness, I tried to establish a sense of normalcy bordering on tedium. Fortunately, Warzel’s portrayal of the character prevented that tedium from being boring.
The character’s sentence syntax – like “eighty bucks I had to pay” rather than “I had to pay eighty bucks” – strongly informed my dialect choice. My years listening to talk radio helped inform that as well (the value primary sources as vocal inspiration cannot be overstated), and by establishing a sense of a familiar, almost scripted, delivery created a foundation of normalcy for the weirdness to come.
What’s Next?
Analysis and exploration of the text are essential for a vocal performer to understand the experience they’re presenting. Mapping out the beats and exploring the narrative “connective tissue” between them provides an essential framework for that task.
In the next article, I’ll explore what you actually do with that information (which will also include character development from a vocal perspective).
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