More Dictation Experiments …

(This is me still practising with the dictation software. I hasten to add this is not remotely canon. (Grin.) As you can see, I’m still trying to get the hang of spoken words on text. My editor does not have an easy job.)

“It is a deeply frustrating experience,” said Emily, “that Dragon dictation software is not as intuitive as I might have hoped.”

“That is true,” said Lady Barb.

“Yes,” Emily said. “Magic is nowhere near as difficult as dictation software.”

“That is because you have not practised enough,” Lady Barb said. “Dictation software needs time to learn how you write, then adapt itself to you. You have to give it time. The genius who writes your stories has already mastered using the software to write essays, but not spoken conversation, such as the one we’re having now.”

Emily stood and paced the room. “It is incredible frustrating,” she said. “My writer is very used to using his hands on his keyboard. Using dictation software, no matter how advanced, is nowhere near as capable. Even when dictating something smaller than a three thousand word chapter, there are still mistakes which have to be corrected.”

“Persistence is the key,” Lady Barb said. “Rome was not built in a day. It is unreasonable to expect that your author, no matter how much a genius he thinks he is, will master the software very quickly. He can go through his paragraphs one by one and correct them as he goes along, teaching the software how to adapt itself to him.”

Emily stickered. “He’s going to have some problems adapting himself when he has to write about S-E-X, isn’t he?”

“Well, that’s his problem,” Lady Barb said. “He shouldn’t be writing about S-E-X anyway, should he?”

“It is quite difficult to say what you mean say out loud,” Emily said. “You have to think about each word as you say it, rather letting the words flow through your fingers. The author might require assistance in the form of a copy-editor, to catch all the mistakes that flow from using the dictation software. Most mistakes are minor, but some paragraphs are so completely messed up that is impossible to say precisely what they were meant to say. In fact, the previous line is terrible grammar. The copy-editor will earn every last penny the author pays them, just for catching mistakes that no one thinks about when you are speaking, but tend to cause problems when written on paper.

“For example, you need to alternate but and yet, which you don’t have to do when you are actually speaking. No one notices, when you are speaking, but they tend to notice when you are writing the words down. The author’s editor kept pointing it out during his early years and she still points them out every so often. So do the beta readers, who often called the author out falling into relative patterns.”

Lady Barb tried to look reassuring. It didn’t work. “Rome was not built in a day,” she said. “It’s all just a matter of practice.”

“But don’t you see,” Emily said. “You just repeated yourself again! You said Rome was not built in a day twice.”

“Yes, but luckily I am not the author,” said Lady Barb. “I don’t have to watch my words. It’s all the author’s fault. I’m just a puppet, a person exists only in his head and that of the people who read about me.”

“So,” Emily said. “It’s not your fault when the author wills you into an orgy with a tribe of man-eating cannibals?”

“Saying both man-eating and cannibals is redundant, is it not?” Lady Barb smiled. “And the author should know better than to steal lines from a webcomic, particularly when he has forgotten the source.”

“I believe the main character was insisting she had free will,” Emily said. “However, she just willed herself into an orgy with a bunch of cannibals and was expecting the author to get her out of this predicament.”

She smiled. “I suppose if my character had gotten off the page and insisted she had free will, I would be very surprised too.”

“Say,” Lady Barb said. “Doesn’t that look like a tribe of cannibals over there?”

Emily opened her mouth to scream. “Help!”