Interview with Audiobook Narrator Jonathan Waters

Welcome to Up Around the Corner, Jonathan. Please, tell us a little about yourself, your interests, and how you became interested in narrating novels.

Well, I’m Jon Waters and I’ve always been in the acting gig. Or acting bug as some might call it. It was just something that I think clicked naturally. Partially when in kindergarten I dressed as Batman, and then when asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I came up short. I liked my parents and we weren’t rich so - Batman was out. Yet looking at everyone else choices of astronaut, officer, fireman, etc. I stumbled upon, probably from my dad watching movies while my mom got her degree in the evenings, actors. We’d watch Star Wars, Jaws, Conan, you know - kids stuff. And after a while it became clear that 1 - these are all play pretend. Something I was having a blast at during recess. 2 - these grown-ups were clearly living very well.

So I could potentially be a barbarian, hero, firefighter, anything all while trying to be an actor. Then I suppose being read to at night by my folks, Calvin and Hobbes, Harry Potter, Choose your own Adventure. I ate it up.

Then through college I’d always been interested, and had been doing, little goofy voices around. Then it dawned that stage and film actors age out. You can’t play King Lear as a college student and you can’t be Jon Snow as a geriatric. So time and roles are limited. The limitless, mostly, is Voice Over work. And yes the voice of a 50 year old will not be the same as a 20 year old, but there’s a big middle area where you can just live and be. That appealed to me wanting to, as my dad would put it,

“Chase the Butterfly” forever. So here I be. I do love me my video games, comics, Batman (still), movies, animation, and a lot of in between. 

What skills did you have when you began your career as a narrator? What skills have you picked up along the way?

So I was already good in front of an audience, at least the reviews say, but the training starting all through middle school, to college, to hard knocks narrating have taught quite a bit.

Breath work, while overlooked, is a constant. Where to breathe, how to breathe, and maintain. Theatre and film are a bit of a marathon in their own way. So is narration. You have to be consistent. You don’t know if someone is going to binge your work or listen on their half hour commute. So you have to deliver a fine product every time. Same with theatre and film. Theatre you have a slower building up and maintain high standards through your performance run. Film, you maybe get a rehearsal, but you’re expected to have a high energy, recall your energy because you’re not necessarily filming in order. So scene 4’s energy might be different from scene 15, but three weeks later you’re back to doing scene 4 again for whatever reason.

You also need good communication skills. You’re working with your author and you need to make sure your lines of dialogue are clean and clear. It can get muddled, but good authors will be direct and concise with their notes. If you’re a character reader, like I tend to be, you need to know your buzz/hook words to get you back to your characters and stress that it’s important that your author/publisher/rights holder knows what characters are intended to sound like. There’s nothing worse than narrating what you thought was a male character and finding out it was actually a female character masquerading all along. Might not mean much to a more straight reader narrator but, to us character people, it is a deadly thing to deal with.

I’ve not quite picked up punch and roll as an editing device. It slows me down. But I understand the reasoning behind it. I do the click and roll method. Where I click my tongue, I see it on the file, and go back through and hunt. Regardless, there may be edits that need to be done when, WHEN, your rights holder listens to your work. Not necessarily the big ones of “oh this was actually Jen’s line” or “Where is this whole paragraph” but you might get things that are small and easily fixed. Examples are “too big of a pause here.” “repeated lines that didn’t have your click.” I’ve always been of the mind that two heads are better than one and most times I don’t have a ton of secondary edits. And if I do, they’re done the day after they are submitted. And you ensure your author is happy.

Take care of your voice. Some folks claim to be talkers, I am one of them, and you might be able to

chat all party long. But you’re needing to hydrate, to take a breath, let someone else talk, eat. Narration is a marathon. If you don’t warm up your voice, hydrate, maybe shower beforehand and sing (poorly in my case) you can potentially damage your voice and make the rest of your day, week, really rough for your vocal cords. Which may lead to your next project being pushed back. And in some crazy instances permanent damage. And not everyone needs a raspy hurt voice for their narrations.

Get good with your editing device. I use GarageBand and yes I know it’s a step above audacity but it gets what ACX and many others require with some tweaks, hot key learning, and some YouTube watching from the pros just to get you started.

Listen to podcasts. Levar Burton does a great one to try to learn a new way of reading books. Pacing, and inflection, and some things you may not have heard before and want to attempt. Research is everywhere.

What three individuals would you love to discover have listened to and enjoyed your work—would make you say, “Now that is totally awesome!”

I’d assume living yes? Hah! Steven Spielberg - I mean come on. Obviously, right? Not that I think he’ll give me a job off the bat but - hey who knows. Still the idea that the guy who filmed Jaws, helped create my first monologue in middle school (Quint’s Indianapolis speech), it would be a full circle moment.

Kevin Conroy - I mean anyone who played the Bat would be a godsend for sure. However, the guy who, if not my father, really pushed that voice thing home would be him. “I am vengeance. I am the night. I am Batman.” Ooooh, chills. Every time. And, to that end, to follow that/him too. That somewhere down the line someone like me could be where Kevin is, and some kid somewhere follows my suit. “Holy shit! Jon Waters heard my stuff! How cool is that?”

Kevin Smith - From me not quite knowing his films as a child, but knowing Dogma. Then being re-introduced to him through Tusk and then Clerks when I tried and “succeeded” in making my own film “Twelfth Night” was a great inspiration. I listen to his pods every chance I get and, frankly, a guy so excited about the new, nerdy, and awesome always has my vote. A guy who lights a candle instead of cursing the darkness and certainly someone I want to meet and work with someday.

What things influence your decision to take on a project and narrate a novel, and what are some things that cause you or to pass on potential projects?

           

A good chunk of it used to be “Will this be fun?” “Is this something that I can do?” And while the answer is most commonly a “Sure” or “why not?” There is something to be said these days, since becoming full-time, that makes me go “Will this pay the bills?”

Where I lucked out with The Silver Serpent and others from Gryphonwood Press was they seemed to take a chance on me in the beginning. And for them I’ve done their books royalty share through ACX. I was always a fan of fantasy. Lord of the Rings, Conan. I was in. So that brought the excitement of “What magic is going to solve this?” “A super sword that can do WHAT?!” It’s in my wheelhouse.

What makes me choose on a monetary level is “Can I get this done in a good time, and can I get a return on my time.” Some books, yes. Luckily I live and work not in the big three cities of LA, New York, or Chicago. And most cases I’m not charging Union rates. Which, if I did, it’d become a whole supply and demand issue where I’m putting out fewer books, but maybe getting one somewhere that does pay for my month. But what about my royalty share, and throwing more out there. I think I can luckily say, after nine years doing this that I have both Quality and Quantity on my side.

Sometimes you can just tell by the audition script that it’s just not your cup of tea. Sometimes it’s an author trying to show off with fancy language. And while it may be a challenge to use all those hard to pronounce words one after another, there is a simplicity in the ease of reading and description. “Tom went to the store and he cried, hard, but with the rain falling it was easy to hide.” As opposed to…say, “Tom, morosely, and with the less than truncated air of a bereaved partner wept his oceanic eyes to their tumultuous tsunami as he attempted to parade himself, shivering, through the winter cold to the packed store for nothing less than a pack of cigarettes.” Better? Yes. Sure. In a literary sense, I hope. For me I gotta take a big ol’ breath and hope I don’t mess it up because I gotta attack it again and again until it’s correct.

Many novels have a variety of characters. How do you determine the voice of each character, including tone, dialect variations, mannerisms, cadence, among other things to use when portraying them?

Hopefully the work gets done for you in preproduction with the author to tell you what voices they hear in their head. Some authors leave it to us dumb actors to figure out.

Adjectives help. Rough, course, light, airy, mousey. How are these characters described as moving. “Tom clanked with his heavy armor over to the box.” “Matilda’s lithe form moved like water to the crate.” You might give Tom a more hardened voice. He’s a veteran. Is he a bad guy, good guy, hero? Matilda, does her voice reflect that grace? Does she enunciate her words? Is there a whispery quality to it?

But accents should be, hopefully, clearly labeled in the book. In the sense that “Tom was born and raised in Scotland.” Bet he isn’t Russian. But sometimes it’s never spoken and at that point you and the author can kinda collaborate. For me it’s always Authors choice first unless they pass it on to me.

I remember having to redo Omar’s voice in both Silver Serpent and Keeper of the Mist because before I gave him a husky voice. While I liked it, listeners were not necessarily thrilled. Live and learn.

Are there any words or word combinations/phrases that, for some reason, your tongue always stumbles over and you sort of dread seeing in a novel you’re about to narrate?

Alliteration always tongue ties me. It shows your authors craft for sure. But it messes me up something fierce.

And the big words one right after the other that I, personally, loathe. Because I do have to look up words, and I’d rather not have to do it 9 times in a sentence.

But sometimes a random combination of easy words just throws my tongue and throat in to a spin. Somedays you just can’t quite get out “Jane went for a walk.”

What do you like to do to relax or blow off steam after a long day of recording?

I do like to go to the bar. Have a drink. I’m not a beer snob but I do know a little bit. More of a lager and darker beer fan.

Video games for sure. I just finished Borderlands 3 and am hopping back into Assassin’s Creed 3 remastered. I have been spoiled by the newer games for sure.

Love reading comics. Since I read professionally it’s nice to have pictures with my literature. Eases my eyeballs.

Especially over a long project (or even narrating sequels), how do you keep consistent with character voices, including accents, inflections and pacing? Are there procedures or techniques you've developed?

I write down the characters on a notepad by my computer. So that I can potentially go back and go “Oh, he sounds like….” But sometimes it happens that it’ll be years between sequels and notepads go missing. So, I have to try to remember what this side character, who may not have been anything in book 1, is a huge part in book 2.

But here again you talk to your author and hopefully if they’re writing to your narration as well, they can help guide you back on the track.

Accents and dialects I learned in college but it helps to watch movies. Listen to people from different places on YouTube. And try to find those hook words. For my German-accented characters my hook line is “right, red, road” which should come out as almost “‘ight,’ed,’oad” with a deep in the throat sound that isn’t present for say, cockney, in place of the R’s. Etc. etc.

If an editor from a small press, or a self-published author heard some of your work and was interested in you narrating a novel, what would be the best route to take?

           

REACH OUT! I’m happy to answer any questions or help you out. You can find me on acx.com, voices.com, findawayvoices.com, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and hell, e-mail: thejonwaters@gmail.com. I’d be happy to help.

I do have to charge these days, but we can discuss. Even new authors looking for narrators and what they charge. I’ve been, and am all over the board.

Explain yourself in your message. I mean, I like a “I LOVE YOUR VOICE” e-mail as much as the next guy. But if you’re an editor from a small press you probably have some sort of pitch to get me interested, maybe some things coming up in the future.

Hell, ask if I have promo codes for some books. I probably do. “I need to do more research.” I’d be happy to help.

As we’re closing in on the end of the interview, Jon, is there anything you’d like to add or say to the readers here at Up Around the Corner?

I’ve got some books coming out and I’m hoping to put out as many books as possible. I’ve signed an NDA with one group of books, however, I got a bunch of romance books coming out and I got some great stuff from Gryphonwood and Adrenaline Press that I am looking forward to tackling.

But the big goal of this year is to, at least, do 52 new books. One for each week. And so far I think I’m doing alright. If nothing else, I’m going to get really close.

           

I look forward to whatever the next project is. Everything helps me in some way or another—it just depends.