Interview with the ‘voice’ of Pet Sitters, Suzanne Ellis
We caught up with voice artist, Suzanne Ellis, to ask her some questions about the Pet Sitters books and how she gets ready to record an audiobook.
Thanks for answering our questions, Suzanne. What did you think when you were approached by Penny and Cecily to narrate the Pet Sitters?
I really wanted to read the books to make sure they were good! Just kidding… well kinda. My kids and I had read lots of Penny’s books for tweens- Water or Goo, More Than A Mouse and Himalayan Adventures to name a few. With my youngest we’d read The Other Brother and other picture books when she was littler and we really liked them all. I knew Cecily had written lots of books also, so was hoping the Pet Sitters books would be awesome. I was very happy to find they were awesome! Once I’d read the books I was very excited to get started as soon as possible.
What appealed most to you about the project?
I love animals and having pets is such a fun childhood experience. My adult friends speak with such fond memories about their childhood pets. Pet sitting gives you the chance to look after so many different pets that you could probably never own yourself and what a great way to help other people also.
I’m so happy to be involved with the Pet Sitters series –it can be hard to keep finding well written stories appropriate for your child’s age and stage. Book series make this much easier, there’s much less research involved trying to find the next book. Which means more time for reading to your kids or them reading themselves.
Who's your favourite character to voice (we think we can guess)?
Oohhhh! I actually don’t have a favourite. It’s like my children I love all the Pet Sitters characters the same amount (a lot!). They’re such fun to hang out with and see what they’ll do next. I love when they’re funny and crazy, when they forget to think before acting but it’s also lovely to hear how they interact and care for each other. They’ll sort out a problem someone else created and they live in the moment. I want to live in Barefoot Springs with all these people.
What were the biggest challenges of the project?
My work is unpredictable and work comes in at the last minute so keeping to deadlines can be tricky. Often when it rains it pours but I’m not complaining, I love doing voice over and acting.
How do you prepare for narrating a book? What's the process from getting it from paper to the spoken word?
Here is some of my preparation. I won’t put everything as that would be very long! It also doesn’t sound very interesting when you write it out like this. I really like the prepping process though.
I read the book, as a reader would, without taking notes or anything.
On an iPad (using a program called iAnnotate) I highlight the dialogue in different colours so I can see whose dialogue is coming up. Sometimes I spend ages trying to work out what colour a new character should be. I love colours and what or who different colours make me think of.
I work out the story arc – stasis, trigger, quest, surprise, critical choice, climax, reversal and resolution and mark these on the manuscript. I also note story development, character development and subplots in the manuscript.
I make heaps of notes all around the text. My manuscripts look pretty crazy!
I comb the story for info about each character – what they do, what they say about themselves and what others say about them. I note this down and then need some time to ponder the character and what they should sound like. With some characters I’ve got heaps of information about them and others I come up with more myself. Thinking about the character usually involves doing something else. I do great thinking when I’m going for a run, walk or swim. So I like to do the rest of my prep as quickly as I can so I have time to think about the characters over a few days of working and doing other things.
Then I work on the voices. This might involve finding audio of someone famous or a movie character and listening to them a lot! Recording things in my version of their voice, bedding down the voice and then practising the words from the text.