Raising Hell With Hell Raisers Audio Journey...
By Claire Rye
When a call went out for a multi-character short story to be adapted into an audio drama, I immediately thought of the perfect one: a creepy little horror tale about a young rock band breaking down in the harsh, eerie expanse of the Australian outback. “The HellRazors.” It had the tension, atmosphere, and characters that could come alive in audio form.Working with Rusty was fun—well, fun for me, at least. He did all the hard work, while I provided insights into what the characters meant to me.
Hearing the story come to life with sound effects and dialogue felt surreal at first. When I write, I can see, hear, and feel the characters in my head, so the audio drama didn’t quite match the version I’d imagined. But watching my husband—an avid non-reader—get drawn into the story was eye-opening. His expressions as he experienced each twist made me realize how AI can help us share stories with people who might not usually be interested. It opens up a whole new way to connect with different audiences. I love that!
The end result was pretty impressive. For what was originally just an “experiment” in testing AI’s limits with a narrated, multi-character drama, it turned out well. Listen below…
NOTE from Chris (this file is just over 5mb so an easy email attachment too)
Hearing it all come together, I felt the thrill of exploring new creative ground. I think the final result captures the essence of the story—the humour in the dialogue and maybe even a hint of something sinister lurking in the outback.
A big thank you to Chris Jones and Create 50 for making this connection possible, and an even bigger thanks to Rusty Rushfeldt for his hard work and patience throughout the process. And of course, thank you for reading this blog, listening to the audio drama, and maybe even sharing your thoughts?
Claire Rye
Claire was born in Sydney, Australia.
She is a storyteller at worst, a published author at best and she hates writing a Bio.
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3 thoughts on “Raising Hell With Hell Raisers Audio Journey… By Claire Rye”
Well done, both of you! I agree, this experiment worked well. The character voices were easy to tell apart and very easily distinguishable from the narrator. Emotional emphasis in the dialogue was pretty good, only occasionally seeming in the wrong place, and it rarely sounded flat. Sound effects were effective, and the narrator descriptions conjured up the Australian outback very vividly. (I enjoyed the humour in this, too, especially in the last lines.)
Very well done. I think it all came together really well. I thought the voices were distinguishable from each other and the narrator but also they conveyed emotions effectively. May I ask, what application did you use to translate the text into an audio drama?
Thanks for your comments. I use ElevenLabs for the AI voices. Claire’s story was broken down into 120 separate voice prompts/cues. That way there is better control over each sentence or paragraph. I also do one voice at a time to keep a consistent sound for that person/narrator. The narrator’s voice (male or female) seems to be the easiest to select. The extra characters that have less dialogue is where the challenge comes in. It takes some trial and error to find an appropriate choice, but there is not much control over how the author may want those voices to be represented. If I were to take my time and use my voice to train the AI then I could transfer that training into one of the embedded voices. That’s a future project. If you want to experiment, I would be glad to help.