Quick Tip: Auditioning For Audiobooks
If you focus on perfecting just one thing in your auditions, work on this.
Here’s a quick tip for those auditions you’re posting for narration gigs, and it’s probably pretty obvious. It never hurts to be reminded though. (It’s something I’ve been working on too.)
If you work on only one thing in your auditions for audiobooks, work on the first ten seconds of your clip.
Get the opening to your audition perfect. Well, not perfect, perfect isn’t possible. So try this: Make sure the opening ten seconds of your clip show you as the wonderful performer you are.
I’ve been listening to a lot of auditions lately, and the most successful ones grab the listener right from the first moments. The narrator doesn’t wait to warm up. They don’t do a slow build. There’s no easing into the performance. They are in it and present from the first word.
This isn’t a volume or an energy thing. It’s just a sense of presence, of rootedness, a “This is my story I am telling”. There’s a calmness that radiates from clips that move on from the slush pile to the next round of Maybe to eventually the Yes.
If you need to slate your name, put it at the end of your audition clip, not at the beginning. Why? Because you’re wasting those precious few seconds to pull the listener in by stating your name, the author, the title of the book, the character you’re reading for. The casting director listening to your clip already knows all of this if you’ve labeled your clip with the title of the book and your name. And they set up the audition, so they know the writer and the author and the character. What they don’t know, what they’re listening for, is how you tell the story.
Don’t warm up with your audition. Be warm already. Be ready.
Show through your steady and solid handling of the material that you are the perfect voice of the book. Those ten seconds at the beginning of every audition tell the casting director so much.
Don’t waste those seconds. Those few seconds could lead to hours of work.
TANYA EBY is a narrator, producer, and casting director. If you like her tips, please subscribe and/or share with friends/colleagues.
Such a helpful insight, Tanya. Thank you.
I thought it important you mentioned it’s ‘not’ the energy, but the presence of “my” story! Thanks! This really helps! 🤗🌻🪂