Introduction
A Udemy course on editing mentioned one of the ways to edit your work is to
let your work read back to you. There is one way you can do this, and that is
to read your writing out loud. Reading out your work was also a way you could
edit. I will explain how I got on with that, but first, I will talk about ‘Text
to speech’.
What is Text to Speech?
It is where you get your computer to read your work for you. Various apps
are available; you can get Google or your laptop to do this. From what I gather,
you should copy and paste your work to the specified place, press play, and
then it will read.
Why is it an excellent way to edit your novel?
As I have learnt, Grammarly Premium has good editing values to improve the
flow of your work. (See my earlier post on Grammarly for more details.)
It is good to read out your work, so you can see if you get tongue-tied. It is
a sure sign that others will find it not very easy to read if you do it.
Listening to a computer app reading your scroll is good because you can
catch repetitive words and peculiar phrases.
My Experience with Text to Speech and reading out my work.
I got limited information from my Udemy Course, which only informed me to
click on Google Translate and listen. I could not work out how to use it, so I
abandoned Google Translate.
After searching for an alternative method, I learnt to go to the computer
settings and click ‘ease of access.’
I clicked on the ‘narrator’ and switched it on with the button logo. There
are various options to tick. Using this, my computer constantly talked to me,
driving me mad. It also did not read a whole passage but one sentence at a
time. The program distracted me, so I abandoned it and turned the narrator
button off to stop the voices.
I reverted to using a recording app on my mobile phone and read out my work.
I got tongue-tied with some sentences and put them through Grammarly again. It
had previously been on Grammarly, but I have changed some of the Text since
then. Those sentences, which I got tongue-tied when reading, were the sentences
that Grammarly recommended I change. I remain very grateful to Grammarly for
this.
Reading out my work was tiring, and although it had some advantages, I still
wanted to hear someone else read it.
My fourth option was to look for an app that reads your work out to you. It
was the most successful method. I chose an app called ‘Speech to Text’, which I
installed for free. I copied and pasted my novel one chapter at a time. The
voice was electronic, and that was off-putting. I found some words that sounded
wrong, but I benefited from changing specific phrases that were not right. I
put another person’s script on this app to see how theirs faired. There were
similar strange-sounding tones, but to my discouragement, it narrated much
better than mine. I’m thinking I am going to have to rewrite this novel. There
are other reasons why I have decided to rewrite it, which I will explain later.
Conclusion
Hearing and reading my work out loud was one way I did not consider using it
when editing my novel. The experience of doing it proved to be frustrating but
necessary. Nothing is worse than having a good story spoilt when it reads
wrongly. The plan is to get the book into as good shape as possible before
calling a Beta reader and professional editor to read it.
