Finding Time to Read with Audiobooks

by
Scott D. Parker

With this new job, the time I have to read is less than it used to be, especially if I'm to maintain my writing schedule as that activity trumps reading. As always, audiobooks are my saving grace. I can say with complete honesty that I listen to more audiobooks than I read actual books. Dare I say I'm almost to to the point now where I prefer audiobooks over printed books.

I also believe this: if you don’t listen to audiobooks, you are missing out. Fundamentally, every book tells a story, even if it’s a non-fiction book about migratory patterns of birds. And what better way to experience a story than having it told to you the way our ancestors did: aurally.

As a listener, the story comes alive in ways you just can’t get when you’re reading the story in your head. The voice actors almost always do a bang-up job with their narration, providing nuance where there is only black-and-white on the page. For me, at least, these readers narrate faster than I read so I can get through a book faster than if I read it myself.

Some caveats: yes, the voices of the characters in your head are your own creation and the reader’s voice is what you’re hearing. Sometimes, they don’t match well. I’ll grant you that one. And there are times when a reader of one gender has to voice a character from the other gender and it comes out funny. Touche. Not to be sexist but men doing women voices is a shade better (note I wrote shade; not loads) than the opposite. It’s a rare women narrator who can voice men well . It’s best when either gender just reads the lines as best they can.

Experiencing a book with your ears and your imagination is a great way to “read” a book and one I’ve come to prefer. As a writer, however, there’s an underrated advantage to listening to an audiobook. You pick up an ear for pacing, one, and dialogue, for another.

Let’s take pacing. When I’m reading a physical book, most of my mental energy is focused on the book and the words and what they mean. Well, duh. But seriously, I sometimes find myself so focused on getting through the words that I don’t have time to ponder the grander meaning of the words, the prose choices, the pacing. It’s not until I go back and re-read or sit and think on the work after I’ve put down the book where these thoughts come to me.

Not so with audio. As I listen, it takes me less energy to “get” the story and, thus, I’m free to ponder all those esoteric topics that my writerly brain likes to think about. Thus, my writerly brain is more actively engaged with a story as I listen to the book without having to stop, re-read, and think on everything later. As a writer, I find this kind of give-and-take essential to making me a better writer. I can easily ask myself “what would I do next?” and then have the answer the author chose given to me. Yeah, I know most writers do this anyway when they read; I’m just saying that, for me, it’s an easier exercise when I listen rather than when I read.

Dialogue. More often than not, it’s difficult for us writers to put good dialogue in our stories. I’m referring, of course, to dialogue that really sounds like people talk. Any of us can write dialogue that sounds like a writer wrote it. That’s easy. But real dialogue, the everyday speech patterns of cops, lawyers, killers, femme fatales, you name it, that can be very difficult to come by and “sound” authentic.

With audiobooks, you get the dialogue read to you by a professional voice actor. With a paper book, tt’s the reader’s job to make the words sound real. Here’s where you can tell the gifted writer versus the regular writer. With a gifted writer and a gifted voice actor, the words and speeches of the characters roll out of the speakers and into your ears like sunshine on a warm summer day. It’s effortless. For a less-gifted writer, you can hear the wrongness with the words. Were the narrator an actor in a movie, he’d be able to get a re-write. Not so with audiobook readers. They have to read what’s on the page.

I have found that I pace my stories better and write more natural dialogue as a result of listening to audiobooks.

Am I the only one who loves audiobooks?

Note: I'm currently listening to The Heist by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg as read by the peerless Scott Brick. Man, I love the way this guy reads stories. He actually brings whimsy to the table, whether it be this story, the adventures of Isaac Bell (by Clive Cussler), or the history of Superman. Scott Brick could read the phone book and I would pay money to hear it.

Note 2: If you missed it, Russell wrote about audio plays in yesterday's post.