Narrated headers?

[ayiana]

I'm testing the waters of this whole podficcing phenomenon, and I've got a few questions for the more experienced members here

Comments

[dodificus]

I usually just say the title, author and most times I'll put 'read by dodificus' in there as well. Short and sweet. But lots of people put in more detailed info, authors notes etc. I know a couple of girls put the website address where you can find the authors stories at the end of the reading.

I really think there's no right or wrong way to go about it. The one time that I ever had a problem with the information being given during a recording was when there was *no* information at the start of the track.

[ayiana]

As a newbie, I think I'm in the camp of "the less stuff in the beginning to get in the way of the story, the better." I've been including title and author, but that's about it. I thought about putting in the "Read by Ayiana" part, and ended up leaving it out (I've only done one little tiny podfic so far) because it felt a bit like jumping up and down and shouting "Hey, look what I can do!"

Of course, now that I see that some people choose to download (or not download) a story based, at least in part, on who the reader is, I feel a little less strange for including that information in there.

[mathmusician]

What people do varies pretty much from "everything including word count" to "nothing not even the title", so I don't think there's any way to do it that's wrong per se!!

As a listener I would like to hear the story title, the FANDOM, the rating (and any major warnings), the author, and the narrator. You need to remember that mp3/m4b tag information frequently gets lost so somebody may download your fic and later on only have the filename to remind them what it is! I've had the experience several times of stories that stary with "This is StoryName by Author, read by Narrator" and had no idea what the fandom was!!

My personal preferred "verbal heading" would be something like this:
"This is StoryName, a FandomName story by Author, read by Narrator. The rating is Rating."

An example randomly pulled from something I'm currently reading would be:
"This is 'Clear Blue Skies', a Stargate: Atlantis story by lamardeuse, read by mathmusician. It's rated NC17"
(No, I'm not narrating any such story. It just happens to be open in my browser for

[ayiana]

Heh. Fandom. You know, I never even thought about that, but it's an excellent point. I'm so used to writing fanfiction, and to posting in dedicated communities, that the idea of including the fandom in the header information doesn't really hit me until/unless I post in multi-fandom communities. But it makes sense that podfic, because there's so much less of it out there, would almost be multi-fandom by definition. Thank you for pointing that out to me. I'll definitely start including that.

As for the other things, I'm very much of the "less is more" mentality I guess when it comes to what to include. I even felt funny at first about including my name as the narrator until somebody pointed out that they sometimes choose whether or not to listen based on who the narrator is. So yes, this is very good advice, and I thank you for taking the time post it for me.

[torra]

I actualy find it kind of irritating when readers add in all the header info, because all of that should be posted, you should see that in whatever post or webpage you download the recording from. I meen, when you post most places, you include all the info as well as a link to the oringal fic. I also disslike listening to someone spell out a URL to an archive, if I'm intrested enough to want more by an author, I'd go back to the oringal post, not try to transcribe something while I'm listening to it. So I really find it unessicary, and it just clutters up the finished product.

In all honesty, since most of the information I need to know before listening (like the rating, the pairing, and the summery) should be stated in the orignal post or webpage, I don't really need all that much in the actual recording itself. Must Haves are definatly the Title, Author's name and the Reader's Name (as there are just some readers that, no matter how good the fic is, I just can not listen to them), and the fandom, and if the fic is part of a

[ayiana]

This makes sense to me. When I listen to an audiobook from the library, it doesn't include all this extra stuff, so it doesn't seem to make sense that podfic would need it either. That said, it does make sense to check with the author about it, because they may have reasons why they feel a certain piece of information (author's notes or dedication) really needs to be included.

Thanks for the advice. It's very helpful. :)

[ayiana]

I'm still figuring out the tags. I don't have an Ipod, so that part is very foreign to me. But the consensus does seem to be title/author/narrator only in the spoken text, with anything else included elsewhere - either through tags or via the post header.

Speaking of tags, do you use "audiobook" as the genre? I notice that the current (stable) version of audacity has a drop down list for genre that doesn't include that option (I chose speech on the one I already did), but the new beta version will allow you to manually type in the genre.

[mcollinknight]

I usually just say the title - sometimes the author - and what "chapter" or part it is. Anything else - narrator, rating, et cetty rah, I put in the A/N. However, this is because anyone who listens to the stuff I read has already read it/is familiar with it so a rating isn't necessary.