Episode 16: Finding a Door Into Difficult Stories

If you're in this industry long enough, you'll get THAT book. That one that challenges your tongue and breath control, the one that didn't get the full editor pass, or the one where the characters and you just don't seem to click. 

And I get it. It's hard to get passed. So in this episode we chat about ways to dig in deeper, shift your mindset and do the dang thing. 

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Transcript

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I'm Brenda Scott Wazlow, and this is Good Arl, a podcast where we talk about what actually makes an audiobook work, why some performances pull you in and others fall flat, and what it really takes to tell a story people feel. Hello. I am back after a week hiatus. I went to sunny northern Michigan. I was on a boat. I was on a lake. I am refreshed and ready to go, rearing to get back into topics with you. And I've got a big one this week. Today's episode is one that I think every narrator runs into eventually. And honestly, if you haven't yet, just give it time. Sooner or later, you're going to open up a manuscript and realize you're just not connecting with it. Maybe it's written in a way that trips you up because it isn't the way you naturally speak, or maybe it's a little heady or confusing, or maybe the characters are making choices that don't feel grounded to you. They fall in love at the drop of a hat, or somebody suddenly betrays someone without enough setup, or a character does something so unexpected that you're sitting there thinking, I don't know how to marry this with everything else I've learned about this person. These books happen, and they're actually some of the most interesting acting challenges we get. One of the things I love about audiobook narration is that audio can elevate an author's words. We get to create bridges that don't exist on the page. Subtext gets to live in our voices. Our acting choices become part of the infrastructure that helps an audience understand a story. Sometimes the page gives you everything you need, and sometimes it's our job to gently connect the dots in a way that feels honest and emotionally true. The reality of our career is that not every book is going to be the connection of our dreams. Sometimes your voice is exactly right for a story that just isn't your personal taste. Like, for example, I do a lot of romance. I do a lot of erotica. And there are absolutely kinks that are just not for me. Like, I don't yuck anybody else's yum. Those stories deserve to be told, and I am proud to be telling them. Those listeners deserve to hear them. Those authors deserve the same level of professionalism as every other author I work with, but there are definitely moments where I find myself in situations that I wouldn't naturally gravitate toward, and that's okay. Our job isn't to become the character. Our job is to understand them well enough that somebody else believes them, right? When I find a character that I'm having a hard time connecting with, like maybe they're not particularly redeemable, maybe their choices frustrate me. Maybe I just can't quite get my footing in how they talk. I stop trying to force myself to understand every piece of them. And instead I find one thing. Just one. Maybe it's a sentence where they wink. Maybe they have blue eyes. Maybe they're from the South. Maybe they remind me of somebody I knew years ago. And I latch onto that one detail, and then I connect that detail to a real emotional experience in my own life. If it's the wink, there are plenty of Hollywood actors that could wink at me and I'd melt into a puddle. Great, I'll borrow that feeling. If they're from the South, maybe I think about someone I knew when I lived in Florida who always made me feel welcome. If they're funny, maybe I picture one of my improv friends. If they're stubborn, maybe I think of a family member that I adore, despite the fact that they drive me absolutely insane. The point isn't that those people become the character. That's not what I'm saying. It's relating and grounding the character by giving myself one truthful emotional anchor to help introduce me into the emotional core of the story. Once I have that, even if I can't connect with anything else, if I can connect with that one thing, everything else becomes easier to build around. Sometimes the challenge isn't the character, sometimes it's the manuscript itself. And we've all had books that haven't gone through quite enough editing as others. Maybe there are grammatical errors every other paragraph. Maybe somebody's eyes started off green and now they're suddenly brown halfway through the book. It's happened. Maybe continuity gets a little fuzzy or dialogue doesn't quite flow naturally or the tenses change, and every page feels like you're being tripped up by another little speed bump. It's frustrating. You're allowed to be frustrated by that. We're professionals, we like polished work. But once I acknowledge that frustration, I also have to let it go. I can't spend eight hours annoyed at a manuscript because the only thing that's going to happen is that the listener is going to hear my frustration instead of the story. I still have to justify those choices. I still have to believe the moment I'm in, even if I know something earlier doesn't quite line up. That's part of acting. We don't always get perfect material. We do our best work with the material we're given. One thing I notice in myself whenever I'm struggling is that I start falling into what I call my default narrator cadence, and we all have one. You probably know exactly what I'm talking about, and you've definitely heard it in several audiobooks. Everything starts sounding the same, the rhythm gets repetitive. The pitch patterns repeat over and over again. My brain is no longer actively making choices, it's just trying to get through that sentence and to the next page. And that's my cue to stop. Not push through. Get out of the booth. I don't care how close the deadline is, go outside for 10 minutes, touch some grass, listen to a piece of classical music, stretch your back, lay on the floor, get a glass of water, do something that interrupts whatever loop your brain has gotten itself into. Because nine times out of 10, when I come back, I hear things differently. And those breaks are especially important on the really long books. Fantasy, lit RPG, Epic series, 25-hour projects where you've been living with these characters for weeks. I have a close friend, shout out if you're listening, who literally had a 50-hour book. You have to schedule breaks. If you have a 50-hour book, your brain is bound to check out. You need to have scheduled breaks and you need to have them before you think you need them. It's kind of like how they say, if you're thirsty, you're already dehydrated, right? If you catch yourself in that cadence, chances are there are minutes of audio that have happened before you caught yourself. So how to remedy this, right? Schedule those breaks. Schedule them before you think you need them and stay on top of them. I'm a huge fan of the Pomodoro technique. And if you haven't heard of it before, it is a like task timer where you have a certain amount of time dedicated and it counts down, and then you have a break. And you can Google Pomodoro timer and they're free on browsers, and you can just use your app on your phone. You can just literally set a stopwatch. I usually work for 50 minutes and then I take 10 off. But maybe your rhythm is 20 on and five off, and maybe it's 45 and 15. I don't really care what the numbers are. I care that you're constantly giving your brain opportunities to reset because attention is a finite resource. The more you protect it, the better your work stays over the course of an entire book. And if I'm feeling completely uninspired, if nothing is clicking and all my tricks aren't tricking, and I can't seem to reconnect with why I love this work, that's when I pull out the big guns. I go consume art. We're artists. We have to feed that part of ourselves. Go see a play, watch a movie that everybody says is incredible, listen to a symphony, read a book that has absolutely nothing to do with work. Paint, garden, visit a museum, do something with your hands. Go find something that reminds you why stories matter in the first place. Go find something that touches you. I think we sometimes expect ourselves to create endlessly without remembering that artists have to refill the well every once in a while. Inspiration just doesn't magically appear because we sat in our booth for another six hours. Sometimes it comes from walking away for a little while and letting someone else's art remind us why we choose this career. If you do this long enough, you're going to have books that you absolutely adore. And you're going to have books that become career highlights. But then you're also going to have books that were simply jobs. But those are opportunities too. Every difficult manuscript teaches you something. Every character that took extra work expands your toolkit. Every editing challenge forces you to become a little more adaptable than you were before. One thing I will say though, this is important. It is never okay to badmouth a project publicly. Ever. That book was written with heart. It was written with intention. Somebody spent months, maybe years, creating it. And we are part of that creative team. And I think we have a responsibility to honor that. You can absolutely learn from a project that wasn't your favorite, and you can privately reflect on what was difficult and what you want to improve next time. But professionalism in this industry matters. And part of professionalism is recognizing that this story wasn't written for us, it was written for its audience. And every project becomes another step in our growth as artists. And we can always, always be grateful for that. There isn't a summit where somebody hands you a certificate that says you've officially mastered acting. We're always learning, we're always refining. Every book asks something a little different of us, and every book leaves us a little better than when we started. And honestly, I think that is one of the most beautiful parts of this career. I hope some of these ideas help. The next time you find yourself staring at a manuscript, wondering if you're ever going to get through it, chances are you will. And until next time, happy narrating.