Audiobook Voices- Singular vs Plural
I have a confession: I have never listened to an audiobook. I know, it’s wild and I promise I have nothing against them. The joy of holding tactile pages has never left me feeling the need to explore otherwise. But what about the time in the car? Podcasts. Either way, I’m unfamiliar with the audiobook world but I want to offer In Stasis on audiobook. I had thought that audiobook always had multiple voices if there were multiple characters speaking. Imagine my surprise when I found out that is not the most common format. In fact the internet says it’s actually not as popular due to people not liking one of the voices and the increasing probability when there’s multiple voices along with people becoming confused by the various voices. Here I was thinking it would be less confusing but apparently that’s the complete opposite! When my partner and I were chatting about this revelation that it’s not a play on the radio, the thought crossed of how people read. As in, do people “hear” different voices in their head when they’re reading or is it all in one, singular voice? I hear a full cast and initially chalked up my assumption about audio books to that personality-biological trait. So, of course I had to turn to social media.
Threads has been great for polls in the writer community and book world. I created 2 polls. The first asked, “When you are reading a fiction book with multiple people speaking… in your head do you read them in different voices or is it all 1 voice?”. Different voices received 81% votes whereas only 19% chose 1 singular voice. Ok, we’re on the same page so far.
The second question was, “ If you listen to Audio books do you prefer a single narrator, a single narrator with inflections, a few narrators (1-3), or a whole cast?” I encouraged those who answered the first question to answer the second and I know that some of them did. The results? Single narrator with inflections won with 40% ! It was followed by a few at 26%, a whole cast at 19% and single narrator came in last at 14%. Some of the comments did agree with what the internet said in regards to why they didn’t like multiple narrators. One person even said he liked the concept but every time he’s heard it that it feels like “bad community theatre”. Ouch!
So my take away — even if we like a full ensemble in our heads we only want 1 in our ear. One narrator who understands how to emphasize, be pensive, etc for tone and characters. So fascinating! And while no, the masses don’t necessarily decide things for my book or marketing it’s interesting to better understand. If everyone, (or nearly), feels one way I’m going to take it into consideration. I’m not particularly partial on either way so why not listen to what people have strong opinions on?