Liam Livings
Twitter
  • Home
  • Books
    • Kieran series >
      • Kieran's Out
      • Kieran's Pride
      • Kieran's Prince
    • Kev Series >
      • Adventures in Dating...in Heels
      • Rocky Road of Love...In Heels
      • Kicking Up My Heels...in Heels
    • Regiment of Majestic Gays Series >
      • The Regiment of Majestic Gays
      • I Should Be So Lucky
      • Say You'll Be Mine
      • Don't You Want Me
    • Christmas Books >
      • Plus One Christmas Elf
      • Coincidental Christmas Boyfriend
      • Bear Best Friend
      • Mistletoe Kisses
      • A New Life For Christmas
      • Silver Daddy Jingle Bells
    • Standalones >
      • And Then That Happened
      • Wrong Room, Right Guy
      • The Guardian Angel
      • The Player and the Geek
      • The Journalist and the Dancer
      • Unlocking the Doctor's Heart
      • Guarding the Prince
      • Wild for You
      • Love on the Dancefloor
      • Finding Home
      • Perfect Catch
      • The Trouble With Rent Boys
      • When Robbo Met Daniel
    • Non-Fiction >
      • Marketing the Romance
  • Contact
  • GHOSTWRITING SERVICES
  • Liam's Lovely News

Dictating Fiction with Dragon part 4

20/10/2019

0 Comments

 
Monday, second of September.

This is the beginning of my fifth week with Dragon. I did not use Dragon last week, as I was on holiday. Instead, one was delayed at the airport by to the opportunity to outline in a bit more detail the ending of my current work in progress.

This means that I have had three weeks of working with Dragon so far.

I've also been experimenting with different lengths of time to write in using Dragon. Before this I was using hour-long blocks, and trying to work out my average words per hour. During the previous few weeks this ranged from 2000 to 2900 words per hour using this method.

Today, using a more detailed outline, and using blocks of 25 minutes followed by five minutes break, during which I went on the Internet et cetera, I have averaged 3488 words per minute.

Normally when I write using a keyboard, I like to write in rounds of 50 minutes. I increased this to an hour during the last few weeks of using Dragon so it would be easy to work out my words per hour. However, as writing through dictation is actually much quicker than typing, it's actually harder to maintain this for a full hour of the time. I think this is because it's harder for my brain to keep up with my mouth when generating the fiction.

The combination of having a more detailed outline, as well as working in blocks of 25 minutes, has meant that my average words per hour has significantly increased.

How detailed is the outline I'm using?
Today I wrote 11,600 words, in 200 minutes of writing. This represents notes covering four fifths of a page of A4 paper. About six lines of notes left until I have written the whole of the part outlined.

This isn't really much more detailed than I usually outline, and I find that it really helps to have the scene, in my head, before I start dictating. I have to be able to see, where the scene is happening, and from whose point of view it is from, before I start dictating. Then, once I get into the flow, I briefly glanced back at my notes to make sure I want track of what I want to seem to include.

Overall, my target for average words per hour while using Dragon is 4000. I know some others have reached 5000 words on our, and possibly I may be able to do this, but at the moment and just trying to increase by dictating regularly and improving my method.

I had a minor issue, when Dragon down, with a message that said it wasn't possible to close as a certain file was missing. It also suggested that I re-download Dragon to fix this. This has not happened again. *touches wood* However, and in anticipation of this problem returning, I have backed up my Dragon profile onto an external hard drive. This means that if I need to uninstall and reinstall the software onto this laptop, I will be able to add my existing profile to it, including all the learning and teaching it has acquired from me and my voice so far.

Dictating the punctuation, has now become, almost second nature. I'm not sure if it has affected the way I am writing dialogue, but I don't think it really has.

It has definitely been easier to experiment with using Dragon, on a project that is less important to me. It has taken away some of the anxiety, I had about whether it would change my writing voice.

4 September
I couldn't dictate any of my sensual scenes. I tried. And just no. I'm not against writing these sort of scenes, in fact I rather enjoy them now, as they're a different side to the characters and their relationship.

But I can't dictate them.

Anyway, this situation meant I had 3 sensual scenes left to write at various stages of the book. So, while away alone in a hotel room, I had a glass of wine and wrote these 3 scenes using a keyboard. My words per minute was 1658 which is about half my previous dictation words per hour, and about my usual wph for typing.



0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Liam Livings

    Gay romance & gay fiction author

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    Archives

    February 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    March 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    December 2018
    September 2018
    June 2018
    April 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.