This is not a post about dictating books as I do not dictate books. It does not work for me.
I own six books on dictation and have read them. I tell you this to let you know that I did the research before I tried and failed to dictate my books.
Without filling this blog post with a story about the majority of my writing voices being male, I will just get to the parts of dictation that worked for me.
Idea Capture
I walk my dog roughly five miles a day, and I am what some might call a gym rat.
Without fail, I will be 1,000 steps into a walk away from home and my journal when the best story idea of ever slaps me across the face.
This is where dictation can shine, shine, shine.
I use the voice recorder on my phone and speak a one or two sentence synopsis of the idea
and carry on walking.
When I get home, I drag and drop the voice memos into Dragon Transcribe, and there are my ideas ready and waiting.
Walk Through
When a story idea is beyond the concept phase and has a hint of beginning middle and end,
I’ll start walking myself through the story aloud. No punctuation. No dialogue.
I do this while walking or pacing around the kitchen island.
Most often my sentences sound like this:
“So, he says something about not being a dog, and she asserts her professionalism. Also, there should be lots of trash around.”
See. Very informal, because no one else will ever see or hear these notes.
Just like before: drag, drop, transcribe.
Outlining
This is the most valuable way to use dictation in my opinion. Idea capture and walk throughs are great, but this is where the rubber meets the road.
Basically, I take a walk and tell myself the story scene by scene. Each scene is only two sentences long with little side notes about lines I definitely want to use. I also throw in questions I might have about characters or settings.
I tell the story to myself until I am done.
When Dragon is finished transcribing and I have cleaned up the text, I have an easy to use outline.
Normally, these outlines are one or two pages.
Basically, I use dictation as an accessory to talking to myself. So far, it is working pretty well.
I hope you found this helpful. If you use dictation or transcription, I would love to hear how you use it.
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