21 Targets: The 21 Day Audiobook Narrators Challenge

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In every book there is a new challenge; in every book there is something new to learn, a technique to employ, a hurdle to surmount, but in every book there is an authors’ joy. Find that joy and the rest will follow.

Over 21 days and through 21 texts and tasks I will help you find the authors voice; the authors joy.

There are 21 Challenges, each one to be met by the end the day that challenge is set.

The discipline of meeting ‘each and every’ deadline and listening each day to your cohorts and giving peer to peer review is what this is all about.

Three times a week there will be a group session led by MLD to reflect on the week's exercises:

What has worked? What hasn’t? How different is each take on each challenge?

And opportunities to discuss the industry with a multi-award winning narrator.

And so…to the challenge itself…

Each day a project, a 'target', will be e-mailed to you. The challenge is to prep, record and upload by the end of that day...but also to listen to the other cohorts versions of the same challenge, consider and comment.

I will be listening to each and every target, I will comment each day...on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday we will get together to discuss what has been recorded, to read again and listen, to discuss the business of audiobooks.

Day One

This is the start of three weeks of thought, practice and/or preparation for your audiobook narration career...what are the most important elements to good audio? For instance this piece from The Blind Light by Stuart Evers...What does the punctuation tell you about the pace and the emotion? Not a full stop to be found…

Week Two...day 8 to 14

Meat and potatoes that what we in the UK call this...the big stuff...points of view and characterisation...the two overarching elements of fiction...this will really challenge you and hopefully open your minds to what you are capable of...

Week One...day 1 to 7

By the end of week one you will have recorded seven projects, and listened to many others, you will have had feedback from your course contemporaries and from me...you will have refreshed your technique, maybe questioned your approach and recorded some great texts and you will now understand, YOUR voice is exactly that...YOURS...day seven, Sunday, there will be a group ZOOM, oh how we all love zoom nowadays...for me to give 'in person' feedback and for the group to ask questions...like...for instance...why on earth am I using a Kate Bush song to demonstrate that there are many. voices that can tell the same story...

Week Three...day 15 to 21

This week you will have settled into recording everyday...your mind will be finding the place it needs to be, you will have found your voice and where it sits, you will have found the author, you will be off to practice more with confidence and with new friends and colleagues to take on your audiobook journey with you...and consider...if we all hear a different silence then, surely, we all hear a different voice.