Preparing the story

Making Audio stories		Preparing the story	The website for writers WritersServices has over 1300 pages	To help you find Search Contents
Preparing your text	Tips & technicalities	New Site inside WritersServices	Editing for audio	Audio issues

Preparing the story

Why use audio?

	Poems are designed for performance
	Short stories have a simple structure lending them for telling
	Many societies have an aural tradition so rendering stories as audio is closer to the original
	Longer stories and novels can be made more accessible to non- readers including the young and people with visual impairments

Turning your story into an audio book

The voice

Just as there are great singing voices, there are excellent speaking voices. Half of us can read competently and with a little training this can be improved. However, if you can find someone with experience of acting or singing, the end product might be much better. There are soft and hard voices, young and old voices, plus a range of accents to play with.

Voices get tired so let the reader relax while you are setting up for the next session. People get colds and this can affect the timbre of their voice. If you plan a series of takes over a week, this is problem. But a bit of nasal congestion can produce an interesting voice but it has to last for the whole story. Avoid decongestants unless you want to have the recoding punctuated with throat clearing!

One voice or many voices?

Much written work is clearly designed to come from one person and it is easier to record if the story is told in one voice. However, a story which is told in dialogue might be much better if it is performed. If you use many voices, the listener knows who is speaking without waiting for the qualifier such as ‘said Paul’ or ‘Sheila retorted’.

Size and schedule

Depending on your settings 1000 words takes 5-7 minutes to speak and will take about 1.5 Mb to store as an MP3. If you go for very high quality it will take more space. You may get very good but you will probably find that as you do your standards go up so it will continue to take 3 hours to prepare each 15 of finished material.

The ‘Team’

Before you decide to tackle the whole process yourself just look at the jobs that need doing.

The script editor who is going to make the words work as an audio script
The reader(s) who will interpret the words
A sound recordist or 'engineer' who will look after the levels and equipment
Somebody to will direct the whole production and solve all the problems
The author will probably want to be on hand

It is not impossible to do it alone, but it is much easier if you can form a small production team. There are a lot of hard decision to be made during a recording. The end product will benefit if it is the product of many minds. Would your reading group make a team to help you? Have you any friends in amateur dramatics?

The process

Script editing

	The work needs to be divided into slots. We recommend 14 minutes as the target for each section.
	Serialisation might require some reorganisation of the story.
	Structure the work for a climax/cliff-hanger, the audio equivalent of a page turner.
	Check that the dialogue will work for radio. Words on paper are not the same as words in the mouth.
	Longer words take more time to say which can give the audience more to think about the meaning. So think about substituting some words to slow the reader down. How about numerous for many or exceedingly rather than very.
	Are there too many characters for an audio presentation of the work? Can you find a way to make them easy to distinguish?
	The use of sound effects might replace some text.
	The audible difference between were and weren’t is not significant. If the negative is important, spell it out and use were not.

Recording

	The first read through allows the timing to be checked.
	The reader and director can mark awkward passages and make other notes to help the reading.
	Mark up the script. Musical notation can be useful
	‘Take one’ is always worth recording not just so that you can do a level check but it might provide passages you can use in the final edit.
	Reading a script helps you spot sibilance. This is the unpleasant hissing sound which comes with too many s’s close to each other.
	Perhaps you need to do a final script edit.
	‘Take two’ should give you what you need for the final edit
	Editing is made much easier if the producer and sound recordist have noted the place where mistakes were made. This allows them to be located and cut out.

Trailers

You need trailers and this is a good time for the 'producer' to pick these out. So you might not need to switch on the recorder again to make the trailers because you already have the material. It is one of the jobs for the producer to pick out the sound-bites that will hook future listeners.

	It is amazing what you can pack into a 5 second slot.
	A 15 second trailers allows you to include a few sound bites to link your commentary.
	Mixing is an option that is made much easier with modern, digital editing software. The words might work by themselves but some extra sound-effect might work.
	You can add sound effects. A ‘wild track’ with relevant background noise can provide a landscape for the story. It does not to be intrusive.
	A few notes of music might make a good introduction, interlude or end to the story and is especially useful to fit the time-slot exactly.
	Films use Foley artists to add appropriate sounds.

There is now some form filling (to follow in June 2006). This is a preview of what will be required.

You will need to categorise your work and set:

	Limits include age, sex, cultural or religious
	The language including complexity and any accents
	Style breathless/pacy/literary/surreal/youthful
	Genre

Complete the rights page listing your production team and telling people who owns the story and audio file. This information will download with the audio file itself.

Upload your files to the server

Test the download and the trailers as soon as they become available.

You can withdraw your file at any time

Downloading Each download file is designed to provide 14 minutes of listening. The last minute will be composed of trailers for stories of a similar type. The trailers can promote your other work or others of a similar genre and style.	We hope to start providing structured download in the Autumn of 2006. First we need your stories.
	Feedback Listeners will be invited to provide comments and assessments on the stories.
Web Radio The provision of audio material linked to web radio and podcasting is seen as an evolutionary step.