There seems to be clearly defined battle lines when you compare audio stories with written narratives. In one camp there’s the “listening isn’t reading!” group. To be fair, there are some benefits to reading as opposed to listening. For me personally, reading allows me greater space to exercise my imagination by putting my own emphasis and tone onto written words. There’s also the idea that reading can increase comprehension, but I think that has more to do with the idea that we often multi-task when listening. Yeah, if I was doing the dishes while reading, I’d also miss a few things. But, the trade-off for me is that I can get more narrative exploration in my life with audiobooks and podcasts. Additionally, listening builds some empathy because I’m hearing someone else’s interpretation of a written narrative. This doesn’t always align with how I would have emphasized the story, and that can sometimes be frustrating and other times enlightening.

All that is to say, I get the diehard, “I only read, no audio!” people and I get those who love audiobooks. (What I don’t get is people judging others for living their best, story-filled life in whatever way works for them).

My Journey Into Audio

I started off hating audio books. It wasn’t so much as the purist view as I just couldn’t concentrate on someone reading a story to me for eight hours. My mind would wander. I’d have to rewind five or six times because I got distracted. I missed things. My kids (or other people) interrupted audiobooks in a way they wouldn’t interrupt me if I was curled up with my kindle. I think there is something about the eyes being “free” that makes a kid go “mom’s available and needs to see my latest drawing more than anything in the world!” Anyway, I tried audiobooks a few times over the years and they weren’t for me.

But after writing my first two novels, I decided to focus on writing short stories. I wanted to build my narrative skills and try a lot of different styles and voices — something shorts allowed me to do with minimal commitment. But to write short stories, I also needed to read a lot. And I was vastly behind on short stories. I think the last short fiction I had read was in high school when we were assigned a few Hemingway shorts! Luckily there is a rich treasure trove of short fiction available online, much of it free. Even more lucky, a lot of it was podcasted. My introduction to podcasts was the Escape Artists podcasts — Pseudopod, Podcastle, Escape Pod, and Cast of Wonders — known affectionately among my writer friends as “The Pods.” I realized that when the entire story was no longer than forty minutes, it could hold my concentration.

From The Pods, I branched out to Nightmare, Clarkesworld, and The Dark with the occasional Asimov of Strange Horizons podcast thrown in. I found myself listening to Stefan Rudnicki and Kate Baker so often that their speech patterns changed the inherent rhythm with which I read stories — a strange effect that was at first frustrating, and then surprisingly comforting in its familiarity. I found these bite sized stories perfect for my walk to work or a workout on the rowing machine. Thirty minutes, maybe an hour, and my body can be in motion while I’m listening. But it wasn’t just the convenience of podcasts that reeled me in. It was also the — humanness. The inflection and interpretation of the story, sometimes giving slight meaning I would have missed or simply have read a different way.

As a bit of interesting history, when I first started listening to Clarkesworld, Kate Baker was among my least favorite narrators. I was coming from The Pods, that had very emotionally-charged, personalized readings — narration with high interpretation. Kate’s style was more neutral, which I found frustrating at first. But over time, I came to appreciate her style more because it gave more space for me to layer on my own emotional interpretation. Now she’s my favorite narrator. (And anytime I get to hear her narrate one of my stories, it is such an honor and thrill for me). This is when I started to value audio narration not only as a quick and easy way to access stories, but as an artform of its own — one with choices made by the narrators that affect the listener’s experiences and can be as important as the narrative itself.

Expanding Into Books

Around this time (about a year after I started listening to shorts), I moved on to full audiobooks. I switched because I was driving 2.5 hours to Sofia for blues classes each week, and it gets finnicky to queue up podcasts while driving, and a little overwhelming to listen to three or more unrelated stories in one sitting. I had also built up practice in listening to a narration and had a longer audio attention span, which is actually a different skill than the reading attention span. The first narrator I fell in love with was Adjoa Andoh. I can’t remember if I listened to What It Means When a Man Falls From The Sky or The Power first, but I remember afterwards going down a rabbit hole of her work, wanting more of her voice, and now I often squirrel away narrators I like in case I don’t know what my next read should be. Sometimes the narrator will introduce me to a new author or even a genre I didn’t know I’d love.

Now I tend to be listening to one book and reading another. I listen while rowing/walking/or when I’m too tired to keep my eyes open, and I read when it’s time for bed. Sometimes I go back to shorts between books, and I’ll say I almost exclusively listen to shorts these days rather than reading them. Perhaps I should balance that out some, too! But I definitely find my understanding of narrative and interpretation of the written word to have expanded due to audiobooks. If I really enjoy a book, I’ll read it and then listen to the audiobook to get a slightly different interpretation of it.

In a way, I think this has also started to increase my compassion for online communication. So much inflection is lost in written communication, and we often put our own inflection onto other people’s words. Listening to so many different narrators helps me realize that my interpretation is far from the only one.

Getting Insight Into the Process

I have a narrator friend, Jasmine Arch, who has peeled back the curtain on certain aspects of narration. I used to run a podcast with her about dragon mythology around the world, and she taught me a lot about turning writing into an audio experience. I will never be a narrator (it’s just not my passion or my talent) but I am grateful for the insight I gained throughout that project as well as some of the connections Jaz gave me. One of which was an introduction to Justin Fife who does narration for short stories and audio books. Justin has a streaming studio called 4-Fife-6, and on Wednesdays he does a very interesting stream called Whiskey Wednesdays, during which he streams his narration process, featuring the first chapter of a different novel.

Justin has been kind enough to read two of my novellas during his stream: Mazi, back in October 2024, and more recently, Hold My Heart. Listening to these recordings (unfortunately I can’t catch them live as I live on the opposite side of the planet) has been both a pleasure for me but also highly educational. A lot of the stream is simply Justin reading the story, which in itself is a treat, but there are also standout moments (for me as an author) in which Justin shares his internal debate for how to pace a certain line or what kind of emotion should be expressed in a certain section of dialogue. As a listener, this really makes me appreciate the decisions that go into each narration, and the level of interpretation we are entrusting to our narrators. As a writer, it makes me realize the many different ways a reader might interpret my words. I’m highly interested in the passages that Justin re-reads with multiple expressions, his initial interpretation and then, after consideration, a second that is perhaps more in line with my intended writing.

While this is, of course, helpful because it’s my own story being worked, listening to his other streams of other books is also helpful in developing my voice because I begin to see the range of interpretation different styles can inspire. It is a highly intriguing experience — both cerebral and emotional — and something I think most authors would benefit from doing — with their own books and others.

A Word On AI Narration

Because we live in “these times”, I can’t wax poetic about the benefits of narration without commenting on the rise of AI audiobooks. (I hesitate to call them AI narrations because they lack the key aspects of emotionality and interpretation I find essential to a narration). I will say I have used text-to-speech in my editing process for years — it is very good for catching left out words, duplicate words, or sentences that just make no sense.

Now it is getting more and more difficult to find text-to-speech programs that are made ethically, as many of the models are trained on stolen voices. Which… sucks. As these synthetic voices are trained, they may sound more “emotional” than traditional text-to-speech. They have more inflection. But I caution authors against using them for an “emotional” edit, simply because they lack the element of choice and decision that goes into an actual narration. What is perhaps more horrifying for me, is seeing these AI voices being used to create final commercial (I refuse to call them artistic) products that are sold to listeners. So many micro-decisions go into authentic, human narration, and those decisions create an emotional resonance that just can’t be achieved with a machine. If you’re an author thinking about putting out your books with these AI “narrations”, I highly suggest you take a look at Whiskey Wednesdays to better understand the artistic process of narration. If you’re a reader, I highly suggest you support human narrators.

Find your favorite narrators. Seek out their books. When you love an audiobook or podcast, share your love not only for the author, but also the narrator. Let’s keep the arts human.