Why is English so darned difficult?
After narrating a contemporary anthology, my latest assignment was the historically-based Brits in Time anthology from Total-E-Bound.
I’ve discovered that I like narrating historicals, because the language used is a lot plummier. What do I mean by that? The words used in bygone eras were not as sharp or short as they are now, and neither were the phrases. Consider:
“Yeah, whatever”
to
“Forgive my impertinence sir, but I believe you are being quite presumptuous in your assumptions”
Okay, that’s an extreme example, but I think you get my drift. You can get the idea of the pace of a life just by listening to the average length of sentences and number of syllables per word. Think of it as archaeo-linguistics! (Which is a valid area of scientific research, so I suppose I shouldn’t go making any frivolous statements about it or someone will pull me up on it, quick smart!)
So, the latest anthology has a series of six stories by authors Cindy Spencer Pape, Bronwyn Green, Saskia Walker, Aurora Rose Lynn, Lisabet Sarai and Brynn Paulin. I can’t say which is my favourite because I was captured by the plots of all of them, although I think you already know I have a soft spot for Lisabet’s prose. And I’ve discovered that each author’s style translates into a different rhythm when narrating, so that gives me a lot of opportunity to try different pacing (though I try not to deviate too much in speed from one story to the next).
The next problem I had to tackle was one of characters. I haven’t had a story yet that contains, say, twenty characters (as I’ve read other voice-over actors tackle), but even with five or six you still have to keep them straight in your head somehow. I do this two ways. One, I liken the character to another character or person I’ve seen and heard (oh, that guy reminds me of Stephen Fry’s Melchett from Blackadder; or that woman will sound like a young, crisp Katharine Hepburn).
Two, I also then take on some physical characteristics. If the character is shifty and a little sly, I’ll hunch over when I do their voice. If the character is quite bombastic, I’ll puff out my chest and spread my arms. And, if you can imagine that a character is waving their arms about while they make some grandiose statement, believe me when I tell you that I’m waving my arms about on the other side of the microphone as well.
And it’s good that I was brought up in a British education system, because the little language eccentricities don’t bog me down too much. All words ending with “shire”, for example, are pronounced “shear”. My favourite word for separating the sheep from the goats is Worcestershire Sauce. The logical way is to break it up thus: Wor-ces-ter-shire. However, it’s actually pronounced: Woos-ter-shear. I know, I know, you don’t have to tell me how crazy that is. And J has only recently discovered that the Thames River through London is pronounced “Tems”. To paraphrase Sheldon Cooper, ah English, thou art a heartless bitch.
The nice thing about this anthology is that you now have a choice. You can go to the Total-E-Bound site to buy each of these stories as audio files; you can buy each of these stories as standalone ebooks; or you can buy all of them as one ebook anthology. I think that’s a nice range of options.
And look! The print version of Guarding His Body is still on the home page at TEB. Isn’t that nice?
