Congratulations:  you got the gig, you got the book and you need to prepare yourself for a week of recording sessions.  Get ready for a very independent creative experience. But without a rehearsal or even a read through with the director, how do you prepare? When you read through the book, observe the writer’s style, make notes and choices as to characters and dialogue, and look up words you don’t know the meaning of or how to pronounce.  Next, you’ll want to mark your text to keep errors at a minimum, fluidity at a maximum.

Shall I say it again? Read the book before you go in to record. I have had an actor read all the dialogue bits, where he thought he would be “acting” and just skim the rest of the story.  I cannot tell you what a mistake that is. When I hire you to narrate a book, I am hiring you foremost for your storytelling ability.  In other words, how you narrate the story, not how you do character voices.  The dialogue does not carry the primary weight of the story, it is the expositon.  Read the opening hook very carefully.  It usually provides you with the establishing tone of the author/narrator.  A kind of baseline, if you will. Sometimes the writer will have  later sections or paragraphs of the book narrated somewhat from the perspective of one of the characters.  So much so, that the narrator begins to express the point of view and sentiments as that character.  (In literary parlance, this is called consonance.)  Another section/chapter may be from another charater’s perspective. You can bet though, that you will soon return to that more neutral position from which you began and you had better know what that is.  Make character choices in advance by reading some of the text aloud. See if what you have in mind “works.” If you come in prepared with choices already made, adjustments will be much simpler.

Look for and mark antitheses.  An antithesis is a contrasting of two opposing words or ideas.  The contrast is set up vocally, using intonation to emphasize the words or phrases to be contrasted. ("She seemed to be hiding during the day, but come nightfall, her brightly colored dress trumpeted her arrival with a flourish.") Remember, though, you have to emphasize both elements (or both sets of contrasting words as in the double antithesis above) if I am going to really hear the comparison. Underline the important words or chunks and mark above them “A” and “B” so you don't miss either element while in the booth.

Phrasing. If you are narrating books, then you must have some natural gift for breaking the sentences (thoughts) into phrases. Now, you cannot realistically mark every place you want to breathe, but you should mark difficult sentences, paragraphs, or sections. Use a curved line (like in music) to indicate to yourself not to break the phrase.  (I mark a curved line above long phrases for which I need a long breath, and below small chunks of text I don’t want to separate, i.e., “He had plenty of ups and downs in his life.”) Figure out where you are going to breathe within long passages. I sometimes mark a breath spot with a simple “v’ or insert marking so I won’t interupt the flow of my own reading.  

Dialogue. Make note of what your characters do, say, want and how they are described. These determine the “who am I” of each person.  Note where you place their voice (high, med, low) whether their speak fast, slow, if they are basically someone from your life, thier accent, if any, even physical choices about this person.  Write it down and note what page descriptions are provided.  That way if that character reappears 250 pages later, you will have a handy reference for how you played him/her earlier.  Mark who is speaking before each line of dialogue, especially when the author doesn’t use tag lines (i.e., he said, she said designations). It will keep the scene from becoming stilted and drastically reduce the time you spend making corrections.