all things fiction

A few chapters in now. I remember getting a piece of sage writing advice a number of years ago:

Read your writing aloud. It's the only way you'll come close to understanding how it sounds in a reader's head.

I never ended up doing it, but now I see why it's important and can be so helpful.

It's a lot easier to judge pacing, flow, and transitions when you hear it. The parts that don't work sound like a wrong note was played in a familiar song.

Five chapters of narration complete and there is one feature that would make the process a lot better:

The ability to provide semantic instructions to the virtual voice on how to read a particular piece of text, say dialogue.

Startled, surprised, angry, for example, or even something more granular like "Said in the same way a person who just receives bad news on a great day".

Even better if it would allow you to select the voice that reads the text.

One thing this would do is eliminate the need for dialogue tags, which really aren't necessary in audio books if narrated correctly.