I put together some voice acting character notes for Control‘s voice actor. They don’t really give any more away than the Amazon summary blurb, so I figured I’d post them here. Some of you might be as interested as I am in how this narration process for Audible and iTunes goes…

Control – Character Notes

One thing that I struggle with sometimes as a reader is keeping track of who’s who when there are a number of characters at the start of the story. I normally don’t start a story with a large number of characters for that reason, but in this case, it was a necessity given the story concept.

To help the reader keep track of the characters, I attempted to make each girl’s personality match her ability, so that it works narratively as well as helps the reader keep track of who is who.

For voice acting, the five main girls will probably need to be fairly easily distinguishable. Hopefully, their dialog helps with that–it’s pretty distinctive for Kana, Quina, and Helen, though Tara and Maria are less distinctive. Maybe having more drastically different voices for those two characters would be good?

If you think that textual changes to the story would help make it work better for voice, I’m completely open to that. It’s fairly easy to sync the Kindle version with updates, so feel free to let me know if something doesn’t work.

Character Outline

Major Characters (All are high school seniors)

Kana (pronounced Kah-nah)
Primary protagonist and anti-hero of the story
Half-Japanese
Mousy in appearance
Fierce, calculating, and cold in personality
Desires control over anything and everything – the ultimate control freak
Extremely intelligent
Raised by a single father who drives her extremely hard academically
Plots to steal the others’ powers once she realizes that they have them

Quina (pronounced Queen-uh)
Well rounded academically, socially, and athletically
White
Has both parents, well-balanced home life
Soccer player
Popular and respected among peers
Class president
Activist-type
Receives the quantum/spacetime-bending powers

Helen
Computer geek/techie/hacker type
Korean American
Hipster in appearance
Loves to use hip/irreverent slang
Closet lesbian, has an unrequited crush on her friend Quina
Gains the cyber ability to control technology with her mind

Tara (Tare-uh)
Outdoorsy hiker-type
Native American
Dies her hair red (to distinguish from other dark-haired characters/allows reference by color)
Gushes over environmentalist causes nonstop
Slightly vain, a trait magnified when she receives her ability
Gains the biological ability

Maria
Homebody who likes arts, crafts, cooking, family
Latina
Mothers the others
Always complains about being cold
Gains atomic/elemental control ability

Damien (Dame-ee-en)
Indistinct, a cipher for the story’s primary target demographic (males age 18-39)
Black
Athletic/handsome
Football player

Minor Characters

Amanda
Bitchy head cheerleader character trope (for efficiency, word conservation, reader “gets” her immediately)
Blonde, attractive
Only purpose is to help complete Kana character arc

Kana’s Father
Hard driving
Wants to push his daughter to be successful but has pushes too hard and turned her into a sociopath
Only purpose is to show how Kana became who she is