This post is prompted by Amy, a voiceover colleague of mine, and a recent posting of hers on her fabulous blog – Voice Of Amy

The actual post this refers to can be found here – it’s well worth a read.

It’s all about the ‘conversational read’ as us voiceovers call it. It’s possibly, arguably, the most common type of read we would get asked to perform; for something like an e-learning programme, corporate/promo video narration etc. Something which gives all the relevant information across, without it being a hard-sell pushy narration, just a friendly yet informative conversational style.

But as Amy describes on her blog post – the amount of times people like us receive scripts that require this kind of read, yet the language is anything but conversational, is bemusing. It’s something most people are guilty of at some point during our lives; writing something and using synonyms to make it sound posher and intelligent. But it’s totally the wrong thing to do for a conversational read, because as good as we are, you just can’t make something that’s not written in a conversational style – sound natural like it’s conversational, no matter how hard you try! It’d be like trying to casually insert contractual legalese into a pub chat. It just wouldn’t flow!

Ok, maybe an unusual example, but the point still stands. If you’re writing something to be read conversational, make sure it actually is, otherwise it’ll sound stunted and odd. Anyway, please read Amy’s post, linked above – it’s definitely food for thought!

🙂