What makes a fic podficcable or unpodficcable?

[paraka]

I want to know, is there anything specifically people look for when choosing fics to podfic (other than rare pairings/fandoms right now since amplificathon is currently running :P). I mean, obviously people go for fics they like but are there elements of the writing style that will draw you in or have you backing away?

If an author wanted to write something specifically with podfic in mind, how could they go about that?

I think the obvious ones for me would be basic spelling and grammar (and few typos) just because I'm hesitant to change the author's words even if they don't make sense. If a fic doesn't have those things down, I don't even consider podficcing it.

Most of the other things that get to me are harder to pin down before a recording and it's not until I'm reading into my mic or later editing that I notice these things.

Dialogue tags: or something to help indicate who's speaking. Visually you have line breaks and text formatting to help show when speakers have switched off but that's not there in podfic. There are things podficcers can do to help (doing voices, longer pauses when speakers have switched of, etc.) but it's definitely nice.

Repetitive words: they're really obvious in podfic. "Sara jumped off the bed and looked under the bed" even look a bit wrong written but it really jumps out when read aloud. Or "John said... Cameron said... Reilly said...Derek said..." all in a row, on paper it can almost be ignored when you replace the "..." with speech but if it's used in the same spot every time someone speaks it's very noticeable in a podfic.

Vocabulary: There are a lot of words whose meanings we know but may never have heard spoken aloud. I know I've found myself rushing to a dictionary more than once in the middle of a recording. And while the odd word off won't scare me off if every second word isn't one I know would probably intimidate me into giving up.

What actually can scare me off before I even start is if you combine vocabulary with repetition. If some word I'm not confident in my ability to pronounce is featured throughout a fic I might not want to try recording it. Or it can cause problems while I'm recording, my last podfic heavily featured the word "masseur" and by the end it didn't even sound like a word to me any more :S

Language: Lots of fics can be written in one language but still feature another language within it. I don't know which is worse, a story with a human language I'm not all that familiar with or a made up alien/supernatural language. Conceivably I can look up how to pronounce a human language but, that way lies making native speakers cringe at my butchering. At least no one can tell me I'm screwing up a made up language, however since it's made up, the author may have felt things such as vowels or something are unnecessary making it super hard to pronounce.

Embedded asides: Have you ever run across sentences where mid though, the author will go on a tangent and by the time the get back to the sentence on hand you forget what was originally being said? At least when reading the words on screen, your eyes can wander back to the beginning of the sentence to see where things were left off but with audio, it's a lot harder to stop and rewind.

Huh, I was able to come up with more than I expected on my own. What do you guys think?

Comments

[luzula]

You make some good points that I haven't thought about, and they're really concrete things. I don't think any of them are things I usually consider much, though (well, apart from the basic spelling and grammar thing, but then I probably won't even like the fic if it lacks those qualities).

For me the big one is something I can't even put my finger on, and which I often can't predict before I try reading a fic. It has to do with character voices combined with the author's style. I know that there are some characters I have a hard time with. For example, I find Geoffrey Tennant in Slings and Arrows hard to read, despite really liking him as a character. OTOH, I can easily read Billy Tallent in Hard Core Logo, even though I don't identify with him as a character at all--he's just very different from me.

Then there's the author's style. I sometimes really like an author's style, but I can still have a hard time reading it. And different styles and character voices can feel very different for me to read--some make me want to speed up, some make me want to slow down, some make me want to articulate clearly and some make me want to do the opposite.

[paraka]

You make some good points that I haven't thought about
I've been thinking about this post for a couple days now and was kind of surprised at how many I came up with. They're not things I consciously go into a fic look/looking out for but they can make a huge difference on how easy it is to make the podfic or, sometimes, can make me give up on podficcing a fic.

Then there's the author's style. I sometimes really like an author's style, but I can still have a hard time reading it.
*nods* I thought about putting something like that in my post but I couldn't really articulate it that well and it's such a personal thing. Like, I've podficced three stories written by moirariordan, she's an awesome author, but there are a lot of author's I love. The reason I've done 3 of her stories is because I find them so much easier to read than others.
On the other side of that, there's this one podfic I've made but haven't released yet. Those who have listened to it have said it's good but I had so much trouble making it. It was a 3.5 hour recording for a 1.75hour podfic (I don't think I've ever cut out so much on a single fic). Every time I listen to it, it just sounds *wrong* and unnatural from how I normally am.

I think it probably has something to do with how close the writer's style is to my natural speaking style.