This has been a long-term experiment on my part. Can I dictate fiction? When I was a 12-year-old girl there was a watershed moment after reading Word Processor of the Gods by Stephen King.
Young me had thought up a whole different storyline based on the title alone. I wasn’t disappointed that the story wasn’t about a psychic word processor, but it still made me squint at my electric typewriter with mild disdain. All I wanted was a psychic typist that would write out my thoughts. Okay, I was a bad typist. A good creator and writer, but not as fast as I wanted to be at a keyboard.
Couldn’t I just talk out loud and have the typewriter ghost-write for me?
It was ten years after that my PowerMac had the ability to Wreck a Nice Beach and I was off to the races, or so I hoped. Turned out the speech-to-text I wanted was a long time coming.
Using software and first-gen speech recognition
For the first few years, I dabbled in freeware versions of programs like Dragon NaturallySpeaking and tried the original version as well as Mac-based versions. They all left much to be desired. These programs really require training and quite a bit of it. There were many bugs, however, that would never go away. Those bugs had a lot to do with the way I spoke – Canadian – and the speed at which I spoke – fast. There was no way to achieve any sort of so-called ‘flow’ otherwise. I largely abandoned these programs a week or two after testing each of them. And then when I realized that I had to speak out all the punctuation as I went, I knew this was not for me.
Recording myself and typing it up
Now that’s classy, right? I’d taken dictation before, as the receptionist in a busy engineering firm. The owner would record notes during on-site visits and I typed them up afterward. It wasn’t so hard. I’ve transcribed recorded audio numerous times since and even made some money doing it. Listening to another person relay actual information and typing it up is one thing – listening to myself stumble along trying to tell a compelling story is quite another indeed! I grew to hate it, the typing portion. The recording portion wasn’t so bad. I could truly free-flow ideas and some stories had a campfire quality that physical writing would have killed.
Writing them up though was an excruciating chore and seemed to take forever. The end result of my playing, slowing, replaying, typing, rewinding and editing myself was that I hated all of the work that came from this method. It’s not bad for a quick note – after the gym, a shower, waking up, or what have you – but is useless to me as a sustainable method of writing fiction of any quality.
Built-in speech-to-text applications
Welcome to the new generation of built-in speech recognition! Over the last five years, some truly tremendous work has been done in the area of speech-to-text, largely thank you to technological accessibility advancement! In fact, the computer or device you are using now may have an app embedded or available for free as part of the OS that will do a fine job. After trying quite a few methods, I’ve been sold by Google Docs. Yes. Plain old Google Docs. This is quickly replacing MSWord or OpenDoc for many reasons – and now this massive one.
Google Docs Voice Typing
After opening a new document, in the Tools menu, you will find Voice Typing – or use Cmd+Shift+S or Ctrl+Shift+S. A microphone icon will pop up if your device is capable of this feature, click it, and get talking. The AI will figure out what you are saying for the most part and it is pretty bright. Not only do you not have to train this tool to your voice, but you can also type along with it and add punctuation with the keyboard or hit enter as you go. Far easier than speaking each comma, period, hard return, and exclamation point!
I am very curious if anyone else has used this for fiction writing, or even non-fiction. If speech-to-text has changed your writing habits, be sure to let me know!