The Seventh Minute Audiobook
NOTE From Chris: I asked if any writers also wanted to hear their story read by Text to Speech (after we did an exploratory test with another story) and several responded, including Claire. Her story is above, and here’s what she said…
Hearing my words come to life with a voice for the very first time was cool / weird.
Knowing that that voice was artificially generated was cooler / weirder.
Had I not been told that that was a fake voice – I would not have guessed it. She was impressively real. The small inflections on certain words, the way dialogue was spoken differently and the pacing of the storytelling, was really spot on.
The other thing I thought as I was listening, was during the particularly graphic scenes, the voice didn’t really recognize the gore and add extra emotion to the reading, like a human might have? – but in a strange kind of way, it worked*.
Graphic details delivered in that matter-of-fact way added to the creepiness of the story. So maybe that’s a good thing? But I don’t know if it would work for every story? And I don’t know if AI knew it would work and chose to do it that way?
Overall, when you take into account the time it takes to generate a narration (20mins) and the variations you have at your fingertips- for example voice tone, gender, nationality etc – I think that an AI reading of a story is pretty awesome to say the least.
Does it replace a human reader? I want to say no, no way, never… But I feel like, eventually, it definitely will.
* Note from Chris – I agree, not all stories will work, but the melancholic ones, especially with female voices, tend to be stronger. It’s not there fully just yet, but as Claire says, it will be. And if I am honest, I think it will be sooner rather than later.
Also, it’s a FANTASTIC tool to just have your words read back to you, so you can hear what you do not see when you read.
Claire was born in Sydney, Australia.
She is a storyteller at worst, a published author at best and she hates writing a Bio.
1 thought on “The Seventh Minute Audiobook”
Thanks to Claire and Chris for another great audiobook.
Chris, well done with the audio and graphics.
Claire, awesome story.
Claire, your written tagline, your title, and Chris’s graphics drew me into reading your story. Unfortunately, your story is a prime example of one that I would start to read, but would not finish.
Each of your sentences portrayed detailed visuals that needed to be realized and understood, to advance your story.
My reading challenges make it hard for me to visualize quickly enough to keep up with the story’s progression. That’s my failing, not your storytelling.
Listening to the audiobook presentation works great for me. No reading stumbles, no re-reading the same paragraph or sentence over and over to get the message you were conveying before moving on to the next paragraph.
The audio, either by AI voice generation or live human voice, allows me to listen to the story from beginning to end, with no stoppages. I do, on occasion, go back and replay certain portions of the audio to get the final visual and mental clarity I require, as I did with yours, but only after I had listened to the entire audio.
Now, here’s what audio does to me to help develop my writing skills.
I listen to the full audio and replay it as required to establish what the author is conveying for visuals and emotions. Then I go back and take the time to READ the story and identify how that author writes to create their work of art. This process makes the reading considerably easier.
To speak to the AI voice generation not being able to emphasize the right tone, expression, volume, or reflective human qualities is very true, for now. But remember, only you know what is accurate and meaningful to get your story message across. Not all readers will have the same thought or reflective understanding process. That’s why listening to your masterpiece can be advantageous. It gives an introduction and a fair representation of your story, without any preconceived conceptions. A great experience, but not perfect.
You wrote an awesome creation and I am grateful that this audio allowed me the opportunity to experience it.
Keep up the great work.