We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Daphne Winters. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Daphne below.
Daphne, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?
I started my voiceover journey in January of 2024, but I wish I would have started it when my husband suggested it to me.
In December of 2021, I finished my masters in biology and applied to a ton of jobs between December of 2021 and March of 2023, but hadn’t had any luck finding something in my field. Sometime during 2022, while I was trying to figure out what to do for a career, my husband and I were driving home from a vacation. During that 12 hour drive, I asked my husband what I was going to do. We were listening to an audiobook together in the car and he pointed at the dash and said, “this.” I was confused and asked what he meant, but he just told me, “You should do ‘this.’ You should narrate audiobooks.” I laughed at him and we didn’t discuss it again for a while. Finally in 2023 I really started to play with the idea of being a narrator and started researching and considering it, but finally dove in in January of 2024. I started taking classes for acting and marketing. I got my first book a week after starting my classes, and have been booking projects ever since. I actually haven’t had a gap in work in that whole time, which is pretty remarkable and I am quite proud of.
I only wish I could have started sooner and diversified my work more, but fortunately, the latter is easily rectifiable. I have so many goals for where I would like to go, but I have learned that I can’t force the universe to do what I want, but I can put the work in and be patient.
Daphne, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
II am a voice actor but work primarily in audiobook narration. For romance, I narrate under Daphne Winters for romance, and under Daphne Rivers for young adult and other spice free projects.
As a narrator, I want authors to know that I love to immerse myself in their stories and bring their characters to life. I read through the stories before narrating so that I know who your character is before I act them out. I want your listener’s experience to make them feel like they are in your story- that they are the main character experiencing your story. I have even worked on multiple multicast and duet narration projects that bring an extra layer of realism to those performances. Depending on the project, I enjoy helping authors find other narrators for their books as part of my services. Whether they be bonus shorts for authors, social media promotional clips, or entire stories, I enjoy bringing stories to life.
In regards to genre, I honestly love romance for the fulfillment of my romantic heart, but I also love young adult books for the wonder and discovery of the stories. I would also absolutely love to narrate all of the cozy witchy fall romances. I am a cutesie spooky girl. Like I love all of the cute little ghostie stickers and art, but I also love horror movies. I love to narrate any genre really, but I definitely think my best work is in rom-coms, romance, YA, and scientific non-fiction reads. I’ve also been told I have a fantastic southern accent, and am currently getting dialect coaching for Scottish.
I think some of my best work so far is for Cassandra Moll in her rom-coms in the Maple Grove Series. They were so much fun and encompassed a lot of who I am.
I pride myself on being an efficient and effective communicator. I want authors to feel like they know what is going on in the project. I know that their books are their babies and it’s hard to hand it off to someone else.
I am always happy to send auditions to authors so that they can hear if I am the right fit for them. Each manuscript will pull out different aspects of my acting, a read will never be the same, which is why I love sending samples.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
For audiobook narrators, I think one of the most important things to remember is how much work goes into creating an audiobook. Many listeners and authors don’t know the hours that go into one book. One hour of audio takes 3-6 hours on average to produce between preparing the manuscript, recording the materials, mastering, and editing. I am pretty sure the professional standard for pro narrators is like 1 hour of finished audio a day, so that just puts into perspective how much time it takes to create an audiobook.
Something random to know about us narrators is that we can’t eat or drink whatever we want. Sometimes we have to wait an hour to two to record after eating depending on what we consume. Before recording, we can’t have dairy, anything creamy (even non dairy creamy like oat milk), or anything that makes us mouth-clicky or smacky because it is more time consuming to edit out. Additionally, it can affect vocal quality.
Another thing that can be challenging for us is that we have to be whichever character we are reading that day. That means we have to leave our life at the booth door. If you’re having a rotten day – a fight with your spouse, a death of a family friend, just normal stress – you have to leave that at the door so that you can perform. Some days, that is harder than others.
Not to mention, we are also at the mercy of lawn mowers, school buses, and thunder haha. They make recording ridiculously difficult.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
Each story is new, with different characters or different adventures. Because of the differences between stories, it is so rewarding to push yourself to be more characters and improve your acting with every project. Creating new voices and learning new accents is such a challenge, but when you master it, it feels like a huge accomplishment. I have had the pleasure of getting to be a wide variety of characters. I have played a teenager facing adversity after becoming a rare type of witch, all the way to the ditziest blonde named Amanda in Conspira-See by Curt Fulster, produced by Audiomazes. I was recently hired for a dated deep south accent in a southern fiction novel as well as for my British accent for a duet romance coming out this fall. I love playing a strong FMC with some hidden insecurities, but I also love playing villains. I have also recently been complimented on my male voice, and as a femme narrator, that is a massive compliment. It’s rewarding for my own personal growth when I can bring a wide variety of characters to life.
It’s also so fulfilling to be able to hear and see your author’s reactions when you send them their audiobook chapters. Nothing is more rewarding in this creative process than seeing the joy from your authors when they get to hear their characters, especially when it is as they have always envisioned them.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://koshakrecordings.my.canva.site/daphne-winters
- Instagram: @daphnewinters_narrator
- Twitter: @daphnewintersvo
- Youtube: @daphnewinters_narrator
- Soundcloud: Daphne Winters
- Other: TikTok: Daphnewinters_Narrator
Audiomazes: Daphne Winters
threads: daphnewinters_NarratorNo Spice Page: Instagram @daphnerivers_VO
Image Credits
Nora B. Westfield