borrowed shall ye never be

7. Do you do any prep before recording?

I've got a little template that I fill in with author's name, permission-to-record, any music and visual files etc.

Helps keep things organised!

I'll read through the fic several times, thinking about pace and tone and dynamics, and look up the pronunciation of words I'm unfamiliar with.

And, because recording happens at a specific time of day when the traffic is quiet, and ancillary work can happen anytime, quite often I've already picked out my music and made up a cover before plugging in the microphone at all. It can be very relaxing, when you've just finished all the finicky sound edits, to have everything else Just Done, so you can plug it in and post right away.

11. How do you decide on what voices to give characters?

Oh, personality mostly. If their voice is going to be 'on screen' a lot I make sure it isn't too wacky -- Do Not Blow Out Your Listeners' Ears.

And... heh. A main character in my current big fandom (Wu Xie) is supposed to be extremely persuasive, so I worked pretty hard to give him a nice voice, mellow and pleasingly husky. I eventually realised it's pretty close to the voice I give his female cousin (light and pleasingly husky) just pitched down a lot. I Hope I Have Not Spoiled The Magic, Any DMBJ Pod-Listeners Reading This.

20. How do you start end your podfics? (Do you include the full header? Do you do notes/bloopers?)

I generally start with music or plot-relevant soundscaping, with the title and author. It might get the summary read out, depending on how long the summary is, but I'll usually only put things like ratings or content warnings up if there's things like major character death or something else alarming. (I figure someobdy is either listening while on the ao3 page, in which case the other metadata is right there, or they downloaded it knowing it was something they'd enjoy.)

The send-off usually gets a reprise of the intro music or sfx, plus thanking the author and a note where they can get any other credits. I don't often post bloopers, though if some wording really made me sputter or laugh there might be a short clip.