Switching to audio

[Zenith77]

Has anyone tried recording audio of yourself reading one of your own stories and publishing it in the audio section?

Thinking about doing this, in my posh, super-villain-esque English accent.

Though it probably wouldn't work so well for the first-person female POV stories I've written.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I've had someone else read a few, who had the right equipment. I've thought about it, but don't have recording or editing gear. It involves a bit more skill than talking into your phone, I think.

 

[Zenith77]

It involves a bit more skill than talking into your phone, I think.

Well, my partner is really good at that.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

All of my stories get converted to audio during the final editing to allow me to hear the words but these are not for any type of distribution.

I have several stories written in the third-person that would probably be fine for a single-voice recording but as EB mentioned, having the right equipment is critical to producing anything of quality.

When I finish the project I am working on now, I might go back and dabble with converting an existing story into audio using Amazon Polly. I am more intrigued with playing around with the technology than producing marketable audio versions of my work.

 

[NotWise]

Has anyone tried recording audio of yourself reading one of your own stories and publishing it in the audio section?

Thinking about doing this, in my posh, super-villain-esque English accent.

Though it probably wouldn't work so well for the first-person female POV stories I've written.

I've thought about it. I went to the point of installing audacity and recording myself reading a small part of one of my stories. Getting a good result wasn't easy.

You can find some audio book-like recordings in the audio section here, but that isn't what you normally find, and it may not have much of an established audience. The normal recording has a single voice, is fairly short, and amounts to jerk-off encouragement. Some are mostly noises.

There's a sub-forum at the top of the page. If you haven't already, then you might ask questions there.

 

[Lifestyle66]

All of my stories get converted to audio during the final editing to allow me to hear the words but these are not for any type of distribution.

I have several stories written in the third-person that would probably be fine for a single-voice recording but as EB mentioned, having the right equipment is critical to producing anything of quality.

When I finish the project I am working on now, I might go back and dabble with converting an existing story into audio using Amazon Polly. I am more intrigued with playing around with the technology than producing marketable audio versions of my work.

I spent several months last year working with "Natural Readers" voices and using a different voice for the characters to create an audio play. It took a lot of work removing those dialog tags and assigning the voice to each line or paragraph of that character's dialog. And Natural Readers web interface only allowed a max of one hundred lines/paragraphs for each audio file. That wouldn't be a problem for a final version. But it became a problem when I edited and added lines at the beginning of the story. (It would have been easier if they accepted a text file upload with the web voice tags, but their interface didn't.) Then I had to play with ways to cause strategic pauses to get even close to a human tempo.

Ultimately, the best I could do was a rather emotionless rendition of the story. But it was worth the effort to learn that technology and the possibilities.

 

[djrip]

Oh God no. I can't even stand it when I get one of those phone echoes and hear myself talking.

 

[Zenith77]

Oh God no. I can't even stand it when I get one of those phone echoes and hear myself talking.

You're not the one who's supposed to listen to it

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I spent several months last year working with "Natural Readers" voices and using a different voice for the characters to create an audio play. It took a lot of work removing those dialog tags and assigning the voice to each line or paragraph of that character's dialog. And Natural Readers web interface only allowed a max of one hundred lines/paragraphs for each audio file. That wouldn't be a problem for a final version. But it became a problem when I edited and added lines at the beginning of the story. (It would have been easier if they accepted a text file upload with the web voice tags, but their interface didn't.) Then I had to play with ways to cause strategic pauses to get even close to a human tempo.

Ultimately, the best I could do was a rather emotionless rendition of the story. But it was worth the effort to learn that technology and the possibilities.

I know what you mean. It can be like a new toy at Christmas.

I've used Amazon Polly to create a few audio files for one of my stories about a ten-year-old boy getting reunited with a father he had never met. I found a voice that works for the boy, and since the story is told in third-person, I used that voice to "read" the story. The dialog sounds almost realistic to that of a child that age reading a written story, which makes the somewhat robotic cadence tolerable.

It is a cumbersome process though, especially with a long story of more than 100K words.

 

[Lifestyle66]

I know what you mean. It can be like a new toy at Christmas.

I've used Amazon Polly to create a few audio files for one of my stories about a ten-year-old boy getting reunited with a father he had never met. I found a voice that works for the boy, and since the story is told in third-person, I used that voice to "read" the story. The dialog sounds almost realistic to that of a child that age reading a written story, which makes the somewhat robotic cadence tolerable.

It is a cumbersome process though, especially with a long story of more than 100K words.

My stories are mostly first-person, so and I used the MC's voice for both his thoughts and narration, as well as his dialog. I selected different voices for each character in the scenes, trying to not use the same one for two different characters. In that way, I could eliminate all dialog tags.

If I try doing that again, I think I'll alter the MC's voice to make it a more obvious difference between his narration and his spoken dialog.

But you're right, it's interesting to see what can be done with different new toys.