I really enjoy audiobooks. Over the last few years I’ve read more books using my ears than my eyes! But audiobooks are tricky critters.

An audiobook makes you pay attention to every word. There’s no skimming long pastoral sections to get to the action. This can either make you appreciate hidden gems in these sections, or underline a writer’s weakness. We do need description, world-building, and character backgrounds, but it takes skill to smoothly incorporate these into a narrative without bogging it down. Whenever I listen to Katherine Kerr’s Deverry series, I find clever elements I’d overlooked in print.

Stories also have a rhythm to them. There are down or quiet moments in between the heart-hammering up scenes. Many writers are weaker in one of these tempos and audiobooks bring this out.

For example, while I wouldn’t say that Robert Jordan is necessarily weaker in one tempo, I did notice that The Eye of the World’s rhythm matched The Lord of the Rings’ almost point for point. This was so distracting, I couldn’t enjoy the story.

These are just a couple of the reasons it’s a good idea to record your completed draft and listen to it. What eludes you on the page will jump out at you on audio.

Once you have a polished tale, audiobooks can still play you false.

Professional editors will tell you it’s better to just use “said” in dialogue, especially lengthy dialogue. They reason that it’s easier on the reader because said fades into the background. But if you’re an audiobook reader, a lot of “said”s in a short span is repetitive and grates on the ears. At least on my ears. 🙂 I vastly prefer writers with a more varied approach to dialogue.

The voice actor who reads your work is important as well. And authors generally have no say in the casting process unless they’re reading themselves. For example, I recently listened to American Gods by Neil Gaiman on CD. A friend had recommended the TV show to me and I didn’t like it. I decided to see if the book was better (it definitely was!). I’m not sure I got the full impact of it, though. The reader’s voice had this Lake Wobegone quality to it that sucked all the extremes out of the narrative. The result was rather ho-hum. And ho-hum is generally the last word people use for Neil Gaiman’s writing.

Audiobook companies are also notorious for switching narrators in the middle of a series. Occasionally this is a good thing because the first reader was dreadful. Most of the time it gets the readers up in arms. We’ve grown accustomed to associating a certain voice with the series and its characters. It’s really jarring to change that and throws most readers right out of the story.

In a recent example, Lorelei King has read all of Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson series until the most recent addition, Silence Fallen. In Silence Fallen Lorelei King still reads the chapters from Mercy’s point of view, but a male narrator now reads chapters from Adam’s point of view. I didn’t like it, but had finally started to get used to it when, for example, the female narrator would pop in to the male section to let us know time was passing differently for each character. That was so jarring! I honestly don’t know why audiobook companies persist in doing this kind of thing.

To sum up, I think it’s wise for writers to keep the audio version in mind. And maybe insist on casting control in your contract. 😉