Today’s MacZot is lovely interesting if you’re into hearing your own books: Narrator reads text aloud, using multiple voices if you’d like. Once you’ve selected a portion of text you want to hear, you can identify which voice reads what, and then export the whole thing to iTunes. Make your own audio books? Listen to your work in progress as an editing technique? Ask the different voices to read vaguely obscene phrases so you can giggle like a 10-year-old boy? Whatever blows your skirt up. Very cool.
Do they sound like Stephen Hawking reading porn?
I had an ebook programme that sounded like that.^-^
Using it as an editing tool is a fabulous idea.! If as PH said it doesn’t sound like SH reading porn.
I know when I’m editing papers I write, I read them aloud to myself, often in funny performance voices, to test how they “sound” when read. I catch most grammar and spelling errors that way, so Narrator would be a great option for me.
Alas, I can’t afford any of the stuff you’re talking about, like Macs (except the “Big” variety) and trips to Pittsburgh, but I just wanted to say this site is so cute now, I want to pinch its cheeks!
This would be an interesting editing technique, in particular to see if your dialog sounds odd or stilted.
Alas, I am a PC person and do not have a Mac. Yet.
I wonder what the chances are of convincing my husband he should buy me a Mac, because I really want this.
“But, honey, RoboBob can read the love scenes out loud!”
I can’t wait to make myself cringe as I make this thing read the book I’m working on. This looks very useful and very painful.
I’ve used the Narrator for editing my manuscripts (giggling while “Alan” reads the sex scenes is just an added bonus) and it is awesome! No matter how hard I try to separate myself from my work, I just can’t quite do it – I keep filling in the gaps with what I “meant” rather than seeing what is on the page. Hearing “someone” else read through it makes it so much easier to catch bad phrasing, stilted dialogue, and grammar problems.
The voices are actually pretty good – many of them are very realistic. It is a little weird, because the best voice on my system, in terms of sounding the most human, is male, and I would so prefer a female to be reading a romance manuscript back to me. So, due to that and just hearing someone reading my work, there is alot of cringing, cringing and giggling, giggling while cringing…..
Come on, PC people – jump on the Mac bandwagon!
One more reason to love my Mac!
Thanks.
There are services like Librivox that offer free audiobooks.
So you will not need a program to read your text file.