

Bloated writing requires more attention at the editing stage, which is fine if you’ve budgeted lots of time for editing. Hurrying can encourage muddled thinking, which can result in bloated and disorganized writing. This is the single best piece of advice when learning to dictate your writing. Monica Leonelle recommends pausing to gather your thoughts before you speak a sentence. Your mother was right: think before you speak. Be sure to read over your words often to correct any errors while what you intended to say is fresh in your mind.
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Keep in mind, though, that dictation software can make creative (and sometimes hilarious ) “typos” that you may not be able to decipher later. What words will you have to fix? Those that your dictation software didn’t understand.ĭepending on your spoken dialect and your skill as a typist, this may or may not be equal to the number of typos you make in every hundred words. Off the top, you can count on fixing two to five words in every hundred you speak. Most dictation software is now 95–98 percent accurate. You can, of course, dictate an outline or scene notes, but it’s okay to use a pen or a keyboard to outline your writing, too. Having an outline or notes to speak by can help you stay on task and prevent plot holes. This is excellent advice.īecause words can come so quickly when you’re dictating, it’s possible to create volumes of text that go off topic or off plot. Similarly, though she doesn’t use dictation to increase writing productivity, in 2k to 10k Rachel Aaron recommends taking five minutes to sketch out notes for each scene in a notebook before you write it. Monica Leonelle recommends creating an outline before you begin dictation. Below are a few suggestions for managing dictation so the editing stage is easier: Know What You Want to Write If you’ve decided to give voice dictation a try, you’ll need a pre-editing strategy so that the process is less unwieldy. Pre-Editing Tips Before and During Dictation Or you may find that you’ll need to spend more time at the editing stage of the writing process. As a result, your approach to editing may need to be different.
It may be looser, less organized, and wordy. If you’ve tried dictation, you may discover that your first draft reads differently than a typed first draft. What’s difficult is figuring out which ones to keep. It’s not difficult to get words onto a page with dictation.

It’s time to build another writing pathway. My brain seems to be holding up, but my wrists, sadly, are not. I survived those first fumbling attempts, and my typing-to- thinking pathway is now firmly established.įast forward several gazillion words and 11 books later.
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Could I learn to use talking as a vehicle for thinking ? I remember the awkwardness I felt when I was first learning how to type. I’ve learned to think and write through my fingers, first with a pen, then with a keyboard. I’ve come to the idea of dictation with a lot of skepticism. If you change your mind and give dictation a try, come back to this post to figure out what to do with that dictated first draft. I’ve been there, and on some days I am there. it’s not hard, and it doesn’t have to cost you a cent.it gets you away from your desk, and out for a walk if you have a dictation set-up to support that.it can separate writing from editing, which can do wonders for procrastination and writer’s block.you can get words down faster than with typing.

In fact, Cindy Grigg ( The Productive Author’s Guide to Dictation ) and Monica Leonelle ( Dictate Your Book ) have written books on the subject so you can try it, too. Barbara Cartland and Voltaire did it, James Patterson and Dan Brown are doing it, and popular self-publishing author Joanna Penn is determined to try it. Originally published at The Book Designer.ĭictation has become a popular method for laying down a first draft.
