Text to Speech reads my book

When no one is home, I will often read my story out loud to myself. It is really one of the best ways to test your writing. However, there are still those times when I will read what I am expecting to read and not catch the little mistakes that are there. Text to Speech, on your computer helps catch it all.

When others are here and the tv is blaring, I use Text to Speech in my Windows XP, to read my story to me. And, I know those of you with VISTA have this feature also as it is about the only thing in VISTA that actually works. JRockGuitarMan, youngest boy, has a writing disability and uses it to dictate his papers. You can go into Control Panel and set the speed at which he reads, and sometimes it is spooky.

I swear I have caught Text to Speech putting emotion in that was not accounted for by the punctuation. It has also, I swear, added a Scottish accent to one of my characters. Now, I did use “ye be going” type of speech but I only alter a few of the words because I do not like it when a lot of foreign speech is inserted in a book, but this little machine voice started speaking this characters work with an accent. Okay, so maybe it was late at night, but I swear it's true.

In any event, hearing your writing read aloud should be part of your final line edit. You need to listen to each sentence and analyze whether you have written the most visual sentence you can or is there a better way to say it; to keep your reader in your world. Remember, each and every sentence counts.