Night Owl Narratives

It’s just after 2am as I write this. Definitely fits with the theme of what I want to do with this whole website blog thing.

I have had an idea rolling around in the back of my head for a very long time now, but I never could figure out exactly how I wanted to execute it. Let me give some context.

Back in 2019, I was inspired by my brother to buy my first condenser microphone to record voiceover. It was something I had been interested in, after watching a documentary about voice acting and voice actors, so I used the little money that I was earning at the time to purchase a mic that would perform decently well for a beginner, which at the time was the Audiotechnica AT2020 Cardiod Condenser Microphone, a title that I didn’t understand half the words of(at the time).

From there, I would look around on different websites, trying to find scripts to practice with, workshops to watch(sometimes free, sometimes not), and projects to audition for, most of which didn’t turn out. All in all, it was very fun, and whenever I was working on something that ended up getting released, I would immediately try to share it with my family, most of whom didn’t give a damn. Over the years, I would gain and lose interest in the hobby that was voice acting, partially because I am an ADHD ass adult, but mostly because I never really had a decent enough recording space. My desk was in the middle of my parent’s living room with the rest of my siblings, and thus, recording “high quality audio” was almost impossible, not even considering the fact that it was so echoey and non-sound treated. It honestly felt like voice over was never going to be something that I could really give the treatment it deserved, not until I had my own house, something I(a 27 year old man in one of the cheapest states in the US) have yet to manage.

In meantime, I was also being a D&D nerd. Let’s be honest, no one’s surprised. The Venn diagram of people who want to create weird voices and characters for their friend’s entertainment(and terror) and people who want to create emotional, powerful, and sometimes very silly performances to be recorded for cartoons or anime is essentially a circle. I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons on and off for about 13 years now, sometimes with a school club, most of the time with buddies at one of their homes.

Exploring those fantastical worlds, building meaningful relationships with people who don’t even exist but who still carry a realness and substance in their story, playing Dungeons and Dragons is something I very much still love and hope to continue to share, even if I may not have my players living nearby me anymore. Along with playing, I also loved to be the GM. Weaving those worlds with all their oddities and dark corners where players will find unique challenges, both in the combative sense but also in the emotional or spiritual sense, will never fail to hold a unique charm for me. But again, due to life’s own challenges, I try to build these worlds, these settings, slowly bringing it to fruition, while changing little details here and there, finetuning some story notes, getting feedback on other overarching concepts, but I am unable to reach out for the missing piece of the puzzle that makes these worlds I create truly perfect: the players.

Voiceover and Dungeons and Dragons, some of my longest standing hobbies, approaching nearly a decade in one case and nearly doubling that in another, have had a significant influence on the types of projects that I’ve tried to take on over the past several years, when it comes to content or other creative pursuits. There was even an idea at one point for a D&D one-shot that involved using voiceover from my brother, who actually inspired BOTH hobbies, and a singer friend of mine to create an invitation for the adventurers of the day to join others for a dinner party at a mansion, where hijinks would ensue very rapidly. However, that voiceover still sits in my files, waiting for the right moment, waiting for the right party that might be interested in trying out D&D for the first time.

But this isn’t that project, nor is it like any other that I’ve attempted. How? Well for starters, if you’re reading this, that’s reason number 1.

I have always had a love for creative writing but never really gave it a chance to be done, outside of some old college assignments(one of which caused my professor to cry(for good reason I swear)). I was never really a person that went on WattPad or any of those fanfiction focused websites, partially because it just felt odd to try to come up with my own “canon line of events” when the author/creator of whatever piece of media I had consumed recently had already done the job for me. If it sucked, that’s on them. There was no desire to try to “fix” their work.

So this isn’t a fanfiction, it’s creative writing. But I’ve already brought up voiceover and Dungeons and Dragons, how do THOSE fit into all this? Well, I’ve been wanting to find a way to do more voiceover and that documentary I mentioned all the way back at the beginning of this whole thing mentioned that you should try to do whatever work will come your way early on, so that you can build out a portfolio of sorts. They were suggesting helping on smaller projects or live theater, but I figure with the popularity of a lot of the fantasy TTRPG podcasts that we’ve been seeing grow nowadays, I want to try to get my foot in the door with something similar

Here’s my pitch.

To start, I am going to create 5 different storylines from 5 different characters’ perspectives, but all in the same world that I have been spending the past 4 years slowly fleshing out for my D&D games that has yet to be explored by anyone. I will write blogposts(or whatever you want to call these posts)detailing what is going on in each of those characters stories, each being forced to deal with their own challenges as they go through this world. Some characters that I’ll be introducing to you are characters I have known for years, some will be characters that I’ve wanted to get to know for a long time, and some will be inspired by concepts that I have been wanting to explore. No spoilers yet, but I will try to make a post soon with a bit of a teaser as to who you may meet.

The voiceover part comes when the stories are well into their development, with plenty of world lore and character personalities and other currently unknowns are made more concrete. At that time, I will start looking into converting these creative stories into an audio-drama format. I will very likely play the Narrator of the story(NightOwlNarrator, anyone?), but in terms of the voices of the characters themselves and the people they may interact with, either I’m going to have to get very good at sounding like a woman or a young child, or I’ll need to reach out to friends with some decent-ish acting chops that would be interested in getting involved in this little project.

From there, who knows? That’s already a lot farther down the line that I have even thought about, but I would love to see where this all takes us. Typically, ideas that I feel super passionate about tend to die off after a while if I don’t feel the right way about them and stay consistent. This is one of those projects that is going to have a bit of personal attachment because there will be so much of myself, a lot of time and creativity that I hope I still have, but I am going to do my best to keep afloat and consistently creating for. I already have the starting seeds for each storyline and a general idea of where everyone’s going to start. The only thing I need to do now is find time to sit down, put myself in the mindspace of a <REDACTED>, a <REDACTED>, and an amnesiac <REDACTED>, then let the words just flow out of my fingers like I’ve been doing with this post for the past 45 minutes.

Anyways, it’s now 2:48 in the morning and I just wrote all that. The majority of this website blog thingy will be for telling the stories of these characters I’m being oh-so-subtle about, but every now and then, I may write one of these posts. One that is coming from a mindspace that I know very well, my own. Maybe we have a conversation, or I can at least let you know what’s on my mind. Either way, I can’t wait to get to writing.

If you’ve made it all the way down here, thank you so much for reading! I didn’t expect to write so much, and honestly, it does give me hope. Maybe this will actually work out. Hopefully you’ll join me for this little journey and whatever it may hold.

Good night, Dear Readers. May you remember your greatest dreams and may you sleep well enough to make them a reality.