It Seemed Like A Great Idea…

A while ago I came up with what I thought was a great idea.

While recording my narration for the stories from my most recent book, Dennis Barton Is A Bastard and Other Stories, I decided in order to separate it from all of the other audio books out there I would do a full blown audio soundtrack for ALL of the stories!

Not just a few of them, but ALL of them. Music, Sound FX, the whole thing!

I’m really proud of this book and thought this would be the perfect thing for the audio version. Being an Independent Author with no “special guest/big star reader for my book”, I knew I had to do something different.

Since I do sound design on films for a living, I’ve designed the sound on feature and animated films, including Good Will Hunting, My Own Private Idaho, and Will Vinton’s The Adventures of Mark Twain, among others. Hell, I even wrote a book about audio. I have certain standards that I need to meet. I know that if I don’t do my best with these stories the people I know in the business will never let me hear the end of it.

Obviously I didn’t really think this through.

There are 26 stories. Each story runs from 12-20 minutes in length. Recording the narration took anywhere from one to two hours per story depending on the length and the amount of emotion I put into the reads.

Since each story is it’s own world. My approach is to figure out “the universe” that the story takes place in. Where are people? What are they doing? What is happening around them? What does all of this sound like?

For each story I need to design multiple backgrounds and specific FX. Some have music, some won’t. It’s a lot of audio to design, edit, and mix.

I stupidly thought I could knock this out in a month. Once I started, I realized I couldn’t half-ass any of the stories. I need to do it right and make each one of them able to stand on their own!

This has turned into a huge job!

Since these are audio stories, how do I keep the universe alive without intruding on the dialogue? Because there are no pictures, I have to use backgrounds, music, specific sound effects, and the dialogue to help the listener see the scene in their mind and tell the story.

Some of the stories take place in a single location. Senior Skip Day mostly takes place in a moving car. It’s raining. We’re on the highway, going through small towns, and down a gravel road. Did I mention the car is a manual three speed on the column? So I have to put the shifts in as well.

In Birthday Boy the action takes place in a small deli. I thought I’d be clever and add a small bell to the opening and closing of the front door as characters come and go. I’ve added so many tingling bells that I really hate that effect, but it’s needed to keep track of the action. And every time we hear the door open we need to hear the sound of traffic outside. And how interesting is a background of people talking and eating? My challenge is to keep the backgrounds alive and not draw attention to any of it.

In Cosmic Andy, the main character hears voices in his head while he’s interacting with the real world.

Mr. Fifer is lying in a hospital bed for most of the story. Some parts are told in flashback so the sounds move around in time.

What Could Have Been, is two people sitting in a car at a park having a conversation about their past, both together and separately. It is a very dialogue driven story. And the car is not running so I have to rely on park sounds happening outside the car.

On The Mountain Time Means Nothing, takes place on a mountain during a storm with high winds and flapping tents. I need to make it feel dangerous and scary, and still let the audience hear all the dialogue during the howling storm.

And there are nineteen other stories in the book.

I have a pretty good sized sound library that’s organized but it takes time to find the right sounds for each story. If the sounds I need are not in my library I have to search them out and download them into my library. In addition to adding the sounds, I have to equalize them so they sound appropriate and in context, and them mix them all together in a way so all of the sounds I’m adding are not getting in the way of the dialogue, the story.

During this time I’ve also been working on other films to pay the bills. And did I mention that I’m completing another collection of short stories that I plan on releasing this fall? Just the print version, I’m not sure about the audio version yet.

Of course I’ve had to push the Dennis Barton audiobook to the back burner at times to complete other jobs I’m being paid to do.

Am I frustrated that this is taking so long? Absolutely!

Maybe I should just release the audio book as a straight read and not do all of this other stuff?

No. That’s not who I am. I’ve started this and will complete it to the best of my abilities. It’s just going to take a lot longer than I planned.

As far as I’m concerned it will be worth it. Hopefully others will think so too.

Thanks for reading.

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