The brainstorming stage is supposed to help with this, but honestly, there are times that we find ourselves just staring at that blank Word doc and wondering why it won’t come through. Sometimes, thoughts and concepts can get trapped in our head and stuck. If you love methods like the rubber ducky method or phoning a friend for your stories, look no further. Since these software options all boast pretty good accuracy rates and allow you to go back and edit, you’ll be able to spend much less time at the keyboard and much more time writing. Struggling to write legibly or type at a pace consistent with the flow of your ideas can get super frustrating, and there’s no need to struggle through that!ĭictation software can help you work through your ideas and tell your story at your own pace, and since it’s typing everything out for you, you’ll have a perfectly clear body of work to look back on, which can make revisions way easier.
If you’re not the best typist, voice-to-text can be a lifesaver. You struggle with typing speed or clear handwriting Saying your story out loud might make it flow more easily than if you wrote it down–it might feel more like telling a friend, and that can come through in your finished product. This can be especially helpful for people writing memoirs, self-help books, or other personal pieces. This way, you can work in the medium you’re most comfortable in, get all your best ideas down, and go back and edit them when you’ve finished. If you’re great at giving speeches or talks, or if your friends have often told you that you’re a fantastic storyteller in-person, you might be a candidate for dictation software.
That being said, there are a few reasons why you might want to transcribe over longhand or typing. For a rough draft, on the other hand, I like to type, since I want to get the words down as soon as possible. Some writers like to use a mix of longhand and typing to write their work, while others swear by one or the other–I personally like to use longhand for outlining or brainstorming, since longhand forces me to slow down and think through my work. Well, it can’t hurt to try, regardless of your background.
#VOICE DICTATION SOFTWARE FOR WRITERS FREE#
We’ll go through a few of those reasons, and then we’ll talk about some free software options to try, as well as some paid options. There are plenty of reasons why an author might choose to use dictation software. Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, claims to have used dictation software to write his rough drafts. John Milton, for example, dictated all of his work after going completely blind (since he was writing in the 1650’s, though, he had other people transcribe for him in lieu of Google Voice to Text). There’s a long history of authors dictating their work. This might sound newfangled, but it’s actually pretty standard. You say it out loud, just as you would write it, and the software types it up for you. Sometimes, it also uses voice commands to perform tasks on a computer–something like Siri or Alexa uses dictation software to translate what you’re saying into a command that can turn on your lights or order groceries.Įssentially, it lets you transcribe your work. Every author has their preference, whether it be keyboard, longhand, or even typewriter, but we often forget that for most of human history, stories were told orally, and weren’t written down at all.Īnd in the twenty-first century, there’s a way to keep telling stories out loud while also writing them down–have you heard of dictation software?ĭictation software is software that listens to what you’re saying and writes it down. However…įor those of you who stay blessedly out of toxic internet circles: there used to be, and in some places still is, a debate as to whether audiobooks count as ‘real books,’ and whether listening to an audiobook counts as ‘real reading.’ Obviously, listening to an audiobook is still consuming the book–there’s more than one way to read, it turns out, and audiobooks make reading more accessible.Īs it happens, there’s also more than one way to write.
The use of dictation software might not sound controversial.
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