Should Narrators Be Allowed to Edit?

Sometimes the best edit is the one you never hear.

The popularity of audiobooks has soared in the last few years. Because of that, the demand for quality narrators has surged, as well.

No surprise that many of the best are licensing their voices for use by AI systems, so one really good voice actor could “narrate” a hundred books a day, potentially. Or a million.

But here’s a question I’m directing at both the writers (creators) and the readers (listeners):

Should a really good narrator have free license to edit the work they’re performing?

As a writer, my knee-jerk reaction would be to shudder and say, “Absolutely not.” An actor should never have the liberty to rewrite my work. That’s not what they were hired to do.

As someone who listens to a fair number of audiobooks, however, let me argue the other side.

I recently listened to a novel read by a terrific voice actor. They brought the story to life like only a skilled narrator can do. Honestly, some books may be great, but the audio version makes them even better.

(The best example I’ve heard is Project Hail Mary. That’s a wonderful book by Andy Weir—but Ray Porter’s interpretation of it was stellar, if you’ll pardon the pun.)

In the book I just finished, though, the author chose to end nearly every sentence of dialogue with the attribution. So a sample exchange might go like this:

“Are you listening to me?” said Derrick.

“I am,” said Elaine.

“It doesn’t seem like it,” said Derrick.

“That’s because I’m not interested in what you’re saying,” said Elaine.

Even in print, that’s ridiculous. Authors should be better than that. Readers are smart enough in a two-person conversation to usually figure out who’s saying what, especially in a back-and-forth manner.

But in an audiobook? It’s torture. The constant “he said” and “she said” and “he said” and “she said.” Enough already!

This is what prompted my original question: Should a good narrator, especially one who is doing a helluva job distinguishing between two characters, be allowed the grace to drop a few attributions along the way, just to save our ears and our sanity?

I say yes. Again, writers should be better than that anyway, but at least trust a professional voice actor enough to get the attribution across without actually saying it so many times that it makes us stop liking the book.

Thoughts from writers? Thoughts from listeners?

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Dom Testa writes fiction and nonfiction, and would like Ray Porter to read almost everything from now on.

Find Dom’s books at DomTestaBooks.com, and some of his other projects here.