Author’s Corner: Writing for Audio

To help you know how to write for audiobooks, and also to dial in your craft in general, I’ve consulted two of our audiobook narrators: Emma Love (narrator for The Christmas Letters and upcoming titles by Jenny Hale) and Kimberly Austin (narrator for Emma Lynden’s The Holiday Plan and upcoming novels for Harpeth Road authors.) With their help, I’ve come up with a list of ways to improve your writing and to reach brand-new readers.

Let’s dive into the landscape of reading first. In the last few years, as you’ve seen with platforms like TikTok, there has been a digital shift in how we access information and how we entertain ourselves. Because of that shift, audiobooks are one of the fastest growing formats in the book industry. Until now, there was a subset of people who loved stories but weren’t able to consume them for one reason or another. Some, because of disabilities that made reading difficult; for others, it was a time factor.

“One of the things I love most about audiobooks is they diversify who books are accessible to,” Emma Love explained. “They make getting inside a book-shaped story possible for people for whom it’s difficult to consume books via the page.”

For some people, this is the only way they’re able to read. And if we can hook them, we’ve just increased our readership. Massively.

The first thing to remember is that good writing is good writing. As authors, we aren’t trying to change what we do necessarily, but rather, improve upon it. The modifications below will benefit both the written word and the spoken word. When discussing this topic with narrator Kimberly Austin, she told me:

“As a narrator, my priority is to be true to the author’s intent.”

Our job, as authors, is to be as clear as possible about that intent.

Here are a few ways we can do that:

Balancing Spoken Language with Written Language in Dialog

For both audio and written language, pay attention to how your dialog feels when spoken. Have a look at these examples:    

            “I am going at two o’clock. I will take it then.”         

By not using contractions for “I am” and “I will,” the words may come off robot-like. Short, choppy sentences may not always be the best fit either. (Good writing is a mixture of many sentence lengths, and varying them will improve your writing overall.) Try to use everyday language when writing your characters:

            “I’m going at two and I’ll take it then.”

However, it’s important not to use too much of our everyday speak (unless it’s a character-specific quality, but even still, less is sometimes more): 

“Gonna go at two and I can take it then.”

Using a mix of good sentence structure and informal language can help in making your audiobook easier on the ears.

Avoiding Repetition of Like Sounds

Audio differs from written word, in that it’s spoken language. Because of this, an author should think about the sounds within sentences. Look at this example that I found in my own draft one:

The main doors to the inn were propped open, letting in the humid air.

With the written word, our brains read these two as different because of their spelling, but orally, they sound exactly the same, so we deal with repetition of sound. This can happen with two of the same words in the same sentence as well. (For example, “Did you know that I went to that store?” Take out the first “that.”) Too much of this can be cumbersome for the narrator and the listener. Instead, I wrote:

The main doors to the Tide and Swallow were propped open, letting in the humid, salty morning air.

We’ve gotten the same point across, yet a few minor changes have now made our written text audio-friendly.

Pay Attention to Your Sentence Lengths

While long sentences are something we look at in the written word as well, it’s important to pay attention to the length of them when writing for audio. If you notice some of your sentences are extra-long, try reading them out loud to see if you can do it.

“Long sentences can be tricky to navigate,” says narrator Emma Love. “Yes, because while narrating it’s about the physical aspects of breathing and getting through the sentence. But perhaps more importantly, because a listener can lose the ‘sense’, or the thread of the thought if we’re not careful.”

Here’s an example from my upcoming Summer novel (Sneak peek!):

Despite the fact that she kept telling herself that her life was meant to be lived, this morning, she’d carried the weight of her thoughts through the final details of planning the wedding and finishing up the particulars around the inn to prepare for tomorrow.

To get the same point across, let’s condense and delete the pink words, as well as change the last few:

Despite the fact that she kept telling herself that her life was meant to be lived, this morning, she’d carried the weight of her thoughts through the final details of planning the wedding and finishing up the particulars around the inn to prepare for tomorrow. (45 words)

New sentence:

Despite the fact that she kept telling herself life was meant to be lived, this morning, she’d carried the weight of her thoughts while preparing the final details for tomorrow. (30 words)

Same idea; less wordy.

Dialog Tags and Changing Characters

Often, there will be one narrator changing his/her voice for unique characters. Because of that, dialog can pose some issues for the narrator. Look at these examples:

Example One: No Tags

“I can’t go.”

“Why not?”

“There’s no way I can get there.”

“We could wait and go by train.”

In the above example, we aren’t sure who’s speaking. Too much of this can make the narration (and listening) difficult.

Example Two: Too Many Tags

“I can’t go,” he said.

“Why not?” she asked.

“There’s no way I can get there,” he told her.

“We could wait and go by train,” she suggested.

Too many dialog tags, all in the same spot within the sentence can also read oddly and pull the listener out of the story.

Example Three: Adding in Visuals While Telling Who’s Speaking

Tom shoved his hands into his pockets and shook his head with a bewildered look. “I can’t go.”

“Why not?” Sheila asked anxiously.

“There’s no way I can get there.”

Sheila studied the maps in front of her, frantically flipping pages. Then, suddenly, the idea occurred to her. “We could wait and go by train.”

Without too many tags, we now know who’s speaking and when. We also have a visual of what’s happening in the story.

Kimberly Austin explained, “As I’m narrating, I picture each scene as a movie, and that guides my performance.”

By layering in scene-setting, you’re not only helping your narrator, but you’re improving your writing and the reading and listening experience.

Making the story easy to follow for the listener will allow both your written word and your spoken word to be richer.

In the words of Emma Love,

“I believe great writing is great spoken word. Oral storytelling and aural ‘story-hearing’ were around long before the printing press was invented, or punctuation was formalized. Humans are built to hear stories spoken aloud by other humans. So to me, the best way to test written word has always been by speaking it aloud. If we can’t make sense of it aloud, I wonder if it’s yet ready to be on the page.”

Authors are storytellers. Our job is to convey the story in a way that reaches the most readers. We hope you’ve found this helpful! Happy writing!

(c) Jenny Hale