On Narrating Stephen King Sound Effects

The third book in Stephen King’s four-novella collection “Different Seasons,” is “Fall From Innocence” (“The Body”), upon which the 1986 movie “Stand by Me,” starring Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Cory Feldman, Jerry O’Connell, and Kiefer Sutherland was based. It is both a delight and a challenge for a 68-year-old narrator. 

Preparation for the effects was simple enough: I was 13 once, I buddied around with other 13-year-old boys doing things best left to the mists of history, and I lived through 1960. That was the foundation for channeling the voices of all the teenagers in the third book of the quartet I am narrating for Learning Ally.

While voicing the boys was like taking a trip back in time, playing with King’s sound effects was pure pleasure. King gives the voice actor plenty of direction for most of the effects, leaving some of the noises to the narrator’s (and readers) imaginations. Here are just four examples of sound effects I worked on during the narration of “Fall From Innocence."

First, Teddy Duchamp’s weird laugh:

“Gordie’s out, ole Gordie just bit the bag and stepped out the door,” Teddy bugled, and then gave out with his patented Teddy Duchamp laugh— Eeee-eee-eee, like a rusty nail being slowly hauled out of a rotten board. Well, he was weird; we all knew it."

Second, the blast of a .45 pistol, unexpectedly loaded when Godie Lachance pulls the trigger in an alleyway:

“I finally took the gun. I liked the heavy way it sat there in my hand. I could see myself as Steve Carella of the 87th Squad, going after that guy The Heckler or maybe covering Meyer Meyer or Kling while they broke into a desperate junkie’s sleazy apartment. I sighted on one of the smelly trashcans and squeezed the trigger. KA-BLAM!  The gun bucked in my hand. Fire licked from the end. It felt as if my wrist had just been broken. My heart vaulted nimbly into the back of my mouth and crouched there, trembling.

”

Third, the sound a junkyard chainlink fence makes when a furious guard dog hits the fence at a full-on run:

“The whole fence made a low, musical sound as the chain-link was not just driven back against the posts but sort of stretched back. It was like a zither note— yimmmmmmmm. A strangled yawp came out of Chopper’s mouth, both eyes came up blank and he did a totally amazing reverse snap-roll, landing on his back with a solid thump that sent dust puffing up around him.”

Fourth, the sounds of terrified boys racing down a high trestle over a river as a diesel train bears down on them, closing on them with inexorable speed and deadliness, horn wailing:

“I kept waiting for the trestle to start shaking under my feet. When that happened, it would be right behind us. “GO FASTER, VERN! FAAASTER!” “Oh Gawd Gordie oh Gawd Gordie oh Gawd AWWWWWWW-SHEEEEYIT!” The freight’s electric horn suddenly spanked the air into a hundred pieces with one long loud blast, making everything you ever saw in a movie or a comic book or one of your own daydreams fly apart, letting you know what both the heroes and the cowards really heard when death flew at them: WHHHHHHHONNNNNNNK! WHHHHHHHHONNNN-NNNNK! And then Chris was below us and to the right, and Teddy was behind him, his glasses flashing back arcs of sunlight, and they were both mouthing a single word and the word was jump! but the train had sucked all the blood out of the word, leaving only its shape in their mouths. The trestle began to shake as the train charged across it. We jumped.”

Seriously, when you get the description of a laugh, (“Eeee-eee-eee, like a rusty nail being slowly hauled out of a rotten board,”) or a dog hitting a chainlink fence (“It was like a zither note— yimmmmmmmm.”), or the jammed-together screams of boys about to be squashed (“Oh Gawd Gordie oh Gawd Gordie oh Gawd AWWWWWWW-SHEEEEYIT!”) by an oncoming, horn-wailing diesel (WHHHHHHHONNNNNNNK! WHHHHHHHHONNNN-NNNNK!), you just know that part of the recording is going to be flat out fun.