Acting has always been a passion for Nicole Swanson.
She’s been on the stage with many local and regional theater groups, and she served as producer on the musical, A Scythe of Time, which was part of the 2016 New York Musical Festival.
But she’s stretching her acting chops in a new field these days – the world of audiobooks and narration.
“You can’t overact when you do narration,” said Swanson, who has narrated several audiobooks.
[adrotate banner=”19″]
Stage acting often requires a bold presence. Gestures, movement, sets and costumes all bring a show together and help an actor convey the message. With narration, it’s all up to Swanson’s voice. There are no facial expressions, no grand gestures and no interaction with others.
And that can be daunting.
“As a stage actor, you have to enunciate, but with narration, you can have too much diction,” said Swanson.
Until she’d started narrating, she never would’ve believed she could overenunciate, she said. Swanson has a music degree in vocal performance, so enunciation is something that comes naturally to her.
But not everyone has great diction, she said, and for books, she’s learned to relax her speech some. She’s scaled her enunciation back so much that when she recently appeared in a show in Atlanta, the director kept telling her she needed to enunciate more.
Swanson said she almost didn’t even get into narrating. Craig Hart, an audiobook narrator, contacted her about a web interview. He’d found her on IMDb and sent her a message on April 1, 2019.
“I’d never heard of him, and I thought it was a joke,” she said. It was April Fools Day after all.
That connection opened up doors for her.
[adrotate banner=”23″]
Setting up shop was easy.
“I have a quiet closet I converted and sound-proofed. I have a mic and a laptop,” she said.
So far, she’s narrated a couple of mystery/thrillers and some Steampunk, dystopian fiction.
The hardest part still comes down to the voice especially when the book has multiple characters.
“You have to layer voices,” she said. “I did a scene with four male characters talking.”
Each character had to have something that made him distinct, she said. Sometimes it helps if the character has a specific accent.
“I love accents,” she said. “The Steampunk book was fun.”
So far, she’s enjoyed the books she’s worked on, and she’s looking forward to her next project.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” she said.
Charmain Z. Brackett is the Features Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach her at charmain@theaugustapress.com
[adrotate banner=”43″]
