How I Prepare a True-Crime Manuscript Before I Ever Hit Record
Every audiobook starts the same way for me — not in the booth, but at the kitchen table with a printed manuscript, a pencil, and far too many sticky notes. By the time I sit down to record a true-crime title, I've usually spent two or three full days just getting to know the world I'm about to narrate.
People sometimes assume narration is mostly a performance skill. It is, but the performance only works if the groundwork underneath it is solid. Get the preparation wrong and even the best voice in the world will trip over a name, misjudge a tone, or flatten a character who deserved more texture.
Reading for facts, then reading for people
The first pass through any manuscript is purely informational — who's who, what happened when, and which names, places and bits of period slang I'll need to look up. True-crime books lean heavily on real names, court terminology and regional dialect, and getting even one of those wrong breaks the listener's trust instantly.
The second pass is where the real work happens. I start building a mental map of every recurring voice in the book: not just the main subject, but detectives, family members, witnesses — anyone who gets quoted more than once. Even in first-person narration, these smaller shifts in cadence and tone are what stop a three-hour listen from feeling monotone.
The goal isn't to "do voices." It's to make sure a listener never has to wonder who's speaking.
Pronunciation is non-negotiable
Nothing pulls a listener out of a true-crime story faster than a narrator mispronouncing a real surname, a street, or a piece of legal terminology. I keep a running pronunciation list for every project, cross-checked against news archives, court reporting and — where possible — recordings of the people themselves.
Real names and nicknames, confirmed against multiple sources
Regional and period-specific slang
Legal, police and prison terminology
Place names, especially older or since-renamed locations
Marking the tone shifts
True crime rarely sits at one emotional register for an entire book. A chapter can move from dry procedural detail to genuine tragedy within a few pages, and the narration has to move with it — without ever tipping into melodrama. I mark these shifts directly on the script before I record, so the pacing decision is made in advance rather than improvised mid-take.
By the time I actually press record, the manuscript is covered in notes most listeners will never know exist. But that's exactly the point — the preparation should be invisible. All a listener should hear is a story, told clearly, that never once makes them stop and wonder if they misheard something.