7 Ways Audio Can Make Editing Fast & Easy
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About The Author:
Dustin Maxey is the founder of Edit Out Loud, a fiction writer, a software engineer, a musician, and a father of two. The tedium of editing his 130k word novel was the inspiration for Edit Out Loud. Not only is editing incredibly hard but also difficult to set aside time to do. Not being able to listen to his novel while jogging, driving, or grocery shopping seemed like a missed opportunity. Out of that inconvenience, Edit Out Loud was born.
To learn more about Edit Out Loud, visit www.editoutloud.com or follow along on Facebook and Twitter at @editoutloud.
Are you an audiobook fan? Statistically, you’re probably not.
It’s undeniable that audiobooks are picking up steam; just look at how popular audible.com has become. Still, most people prefer reading for entertainment the old-fashioned way according to the Pew Research Center.
Say what you will about listening for entertainment. When it comes to editing a novel, listening aloud has definite benefits. Many reputable sources online point out the advantages of listening to or reading your work out loud, including this one from Poynter.org and this one from the writing center of The University of North Carolina among many others.
Read on to learn the top seven benefits of listening to your work aloud. These advantages might just change the way you edit novels.
Benefit #1: Make More Time to Edit
One of the biggest hurdles to editing is finding the time to do it. You have to put life aside and seclude yourself for long periods of time to make the smallest dent in a 100k+ word novel.
However, using text-to-speech tools allows you to make more time to edit because you can listen to your novel while driving, jogging, or walking your dogs.
I’ve found that audio allows you to outpace physical editing sessions at a computer by tens of thousands of words a week, simply because you have more time to listen than to sit down at a computer. On some of my better days, I’ve been able to leverage text-to-speech to edit more than 50k words in a single day.
What do I mean by “edit” with text-to-speech? Really, I mean identifying errors to address later. It’s a little too cumbersome for me to type with smartphone keyboards.
But editing my manuscript on a computer using revision notes I left when listening to my novel out loud makes my physical editing sessions much faster and less tedious. As you’ll read in #6, listening straight through in a less “stop-and-go” format has additional advantages.
Benefit #2: Gain a New Perspective
Listening to your novel can also give you a new perspective on your work. When you spend countless hours writing and revising the same document, your story can begin to blur. Listening is a more passive way of editing that allows you to enjoy your book as a reader—or audiobook listener in this case.
Simply switching your manuscript’s font or your editing environment can change your format enough to give you a new perspective. Audio isn’t always required for additional objectivity. But when first researching the benefits of audio as an editing tool, I spoke to a friend who makes a living as an author, editor, and college-level writing tutor. His response confirmed my hypothesis.
"It's a well-known fact that changing formats, listening to your work, or even changing the font can help you see it from a new perspective,” he said. “The advantages are catching things you didn't before, whether those are typos, plot holes, or other story elements that need to be reworked."
So, if audio isn’t your thing, you can access many of these benefits by changing your format in other ways. However, in my opinion, audio is distinct in that it provides all the advantages listed in this article.
Benefit #3: Catch Plot Holes
Along with a new perspective comes the ability to catch plot holes. I identified many, big and small, while listening to my 130k manuscript that I’d previously missed in physical editing sessions.
In one scene, my main character was wearing jeans. A few paragraphs later, he sustained a cut on his leg that would have been impossible when wearing long pants. I must have read the chapter half a dozen times, but I didn’t catch that detail until I listened to it.
Plot holes are often easier to identify when listening to your manuscript because of the faster pace with which you can edit using the text-to-speech approach. For example, in the first chapter of my book, the antagonist shared in a kind and respectful conversation with the protagonist.
However, much later in the book, my characters seemingly forgot that interaction. That lost detail ended up having implications on the antagonist’s goal and motivation throughout the rest of the story.
During physical editing sessions, the first chapter and the twentieth were always so far apart that I never caught the contradiction. It was much more obvious when I was able to blaze through 100k words within a week since the first chapter was still fresh in my mind.
Benefit #4: Identify Redundant Words or Sentence Structure
Audio also makes redundancies obvious, though this is a benefit that any format change can provide. I tracked the comments I left while listening to my novel and found that, out of more than 500 comments, “redundant” was the most common one.
For example, my novel revolves around dreams, which my protagonist often describes in great detail. In some passages, I’d end up using similar descriptions in two or three paragraphs in a row. Those things jumped out at me while listening, which later enabled me to vary my word choice for easier reading.
Another redundancy I frequently found dealt with sentence structure. Like many other new writers, I often used the same sentence structure again and again.
For example, I often wrote several sentences in a row that started with “he” or “his,” which made for boring reading. These redundancies were painfully obvious when I listened to my manuscript, so I tagged each of them for correction.
Benefit #5: Catch Errors Your Eyes Miss
Audio can help you catch more errors in your writing. While sites like Grammarly are great for catching blatant typos and grammatical issues, they can miss more subtle mistakes. Sometimes, those may be grammar errors like mistyping a word that can be grammatical but doesn’t work in your story.
I’m a Grammarly user and there are two errors in the previous sentence that Grammarly didn’t note. Can you catch them? If not, paste the sentence into a free text-to-speech editor and see if they’re more obvious.
Benefit #6: Identify Boring Sections
Where a physical editing session sees you pausing often to identify, correct, and re-read passages, audio doesn’t stop playing other than when you leave a quick revision note.
This means that boring passages in need of cutting or modification often jump out at you as you listen to your manuscript, whereas the stop-and-go process of physical editing can disguise sections that simply won’t captivate readers.
I’ve attempted to quickly read through my manuscript in physical editing sessions, but I simply can’t help myself. If I see an error and have the ability to change it right then and there, I’m going to do it. Listening forces you to work through your manuscript more quickly, experiencing your book as a reader.
Benefit #7: Get More Feedback from Beta Readers
When I shared my novel with family and friends in written format, not a single one of them finished it. This made sense; reading a 130k word novel is no small task. I began to wonder whether audio would make it easier for them to find time to beta-read my book.
Very late into the development of my text-to-speech app for authors, I added the ability to share audio with beta readers. I found that, like me, most beta readers preferred listening because it was easier for them to find time to do so. They could finish my novel on their commute in less than a week.
Sharing audio had the added security benefit of preventing my beta readers from being able to steal my work. Even though they could see the content while it was read aloud to them, there was no way to copy anything in the text-to-speech app I built.
I could rest assured that a potentially malicious beta reader wouldn’t find it as easy as pasting text into their own document, changing character names, and claiming my story as if it were their own.
Limitations of Text-to-Speech Apps
Though text-to-speech app voices aren’t exactly accomplished thespians, I still found that the synthetic voices were easy enough to listen to that I was able to streamline my editing process and ultimately create a better novel more quickly. But other drawbacks made text-to-speech editing a little more difficult.
Most text-to-speech apps are built for accessibility, not authors. If I heard something I needed to address when using these apps, I could add a bookmark but no details, and these bookmarks were only stored on my phone. When it came time to implement the mistakes I’d heard, I’d have to hold my phone next to my computer, find the bookmarked text in my Google Doc, and try to remember why I’d added the bookmark. Was it a typo? A plot hole? A redundant word? Often I couldn’t remember why I’d left a bookmark so I’d just remove it, undoubtedly missing an error or opportunity to improve my book.
Edit Out Loud: A Text-to-Speech App for Writers
About a year ago I simply couldn’t understand why there was no good text-to-speech solution for writers. Why was there no way to listen to a document and simply add comments when I found something that was off?
What if I could even sync those comments back to my Google Doc or Word file so I didn’t have to hold the phone up next to my screen when reworking a draft? What if I could share audio drafts with beta readers and allow them to listen and add comments back to my source doc?
These questions served as the inspiration for Edit Out Loud, an Android and iOS text-to-speech app built for writers that actually makes editing fun. The app allows you to:
Listen to your audio document on your phone
Sync comments and notes back to your source doc
Share audio versions of your document with beta readers so they can do the same
I recently had the privilege of launching the Edit Out Loud iPhone app, and the Android version is on the way (7/20 edit: the Android app is now available). I encourage you to take a pass at your novel using it. If the app helps you anywhere near as much as it has helped me, then it will forever change the way you edit your work!
