15-Minute Dictation: More Books, Less Frustration.

by Sean M. Platt, Neeve Silver

End the FRUSTRATION and learn dictation in just 15 minutes a day! Sean Platt spent over a decade trying to learn dictation, without success. He ended up frustrated and giving up after every attempt. After a sudden insight one day he made a few tweaks to his approach to dictation and has used dictation every day since. In 15-Minute Dictation Platt and Silver show you how to adjust your approach to dictation to leave behind frustrating starts and stops and finally be able to produce more books in less time. You will Why authors struggle with dictation, and how to break the cycle of starts and stops. The surprising hidden benefits you get when you learn dictation (it’s not just about going faster). How to rewire your brain to access your storytelling skills via dictation. Why your stories get more creative when you dictate (and why most authors fear the opposite). The “15-minute method” to get over the initial struggle and add dictation as a tool in your author toolbox. Suggested tools to make dictation work for you. Fun and practical exercises to help you get dictating today!This fun, practical and short read will help you ditch the fears that have held you back, the frustrations that keep you in the stop/start cycle, and finally help you dictate. You can produce more books, with less frustration… in just 15 minutes a day.

Genres: Nonfiction, Writing

75 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 28, 2019

Reviews

[Charlotte Byrd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Advice about dictating!

I am just getting into dictation as a writer and I’m already seeing how much easier it is. Certain things are more complicated but once you figure them out, the mental load of typing and creating is greatly diminished. I am a really fast typist, but I am still surprised at how much more efficient I am at writing. This book gives you a really good advice and scaffolding for how to get started

[Ryan Starbloak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great quick read with some practical and easy to implement tips on picking up dictation. It comes from someone who has been trying to get this skill down for nearly a decade, and they offer up a lot of wonderfully written arguments on the why and how of getting your voice into text. Includes practice sessions ala "See the quick brown fox run."

[Mark Melendez]

Good book

Nice little book worth reading, description is in the title. Simple as that. Can't find all the secrets in a review.

[Amber Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inspiration

Inspired me to try something new and increase my word count. It’s been very motivating. Totally worth the purchase for that alone.

[Wade Cato · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book really doesn't have more to say than a quick blog post but it is interesting and has a few good ideas in it. Nothing I disagree with.

[Terri Reed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good instruction on dictation. Practice, practice, practice.

[Lily Bloom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brief but useful

This was a short book but I enjoyed reading it. I found it useful, and although it could have given more information on the subject, I liked it. It informed me of an app to use to record and transcribe (I've heard of others mentioned in this book, but this one comes in handy because it also has a free option - I've already tried it and think it works pretty awesome, just need to get the hang of it better).

I guess the biggest take away from reading this book was to give a shot at dictation. I've not tried at it seriously because English is not my first language (Romanian is) and although I write and publish books in English, I find my accent annoying and thought it might be hard to use dictation because the software would have a hard time transcribing. But after reading this book, I am determined to give it a shot - a proper one - and see - hear - what comes of this experiment.

I think the benefits of learning dictation outweight the cons and difficult times trying to learn how to do it. It doesn't hurt to try to aquire another skill in my tool set.

Thanks for sharing from your experience and writing this book!

Ps: I found the stories quite entertaining and useful material to make use of.

[Marcy Kennedy · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some really good tips in this book for writers who are trying to make dictation work for them. I expect they're going to help me build a routine.

I thought the "dictate these passages" exercises took up WAY too much of the book, which is why this is a 3-star rating rather than a 4-star. It's also a terrible idea to follow that advice if you use Nuance's Dragon software. Dragon's software needs to be trained to the way you, as an individual, write to have the highest possible accuracy.

I also wish this had been a "meatier" book. I felt a little light on content, and they referred a couple of times to a different book that would include more information on the topic when it came out. I went and looked for that book, but it seems it hasn't been released yet.

My favorite book on how to dictate is Scott Baker's The Writer's Guide to Training Your Dragon. If you're looking to start dictation, I'd recommend Baker's book over this one.

[Ellen Bard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short and to the point book which goes through the psychological obstacles to dictations, practical how-tos, and then, especially useful, some specific material for you to 'train' or practice with which I think really gets past another obstacle many of us have, which is where to start. I really like the pragmatic, practical side of things and it's inspiring me to finally have a go at dictation, which I've really been uncertain about in the past. Recommended if you want to add dictation to the way you write (I note add, rather than replace, because a key point is that it's a way of using pockets of time where you can't use a computer, which I think it also quite useful positioning).

[Juneta Key · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Insightful, practical approach to teaching yourself to dictate.

A very insightful read into teaching yourself how to dictate and get past the frustrations. Included were exercises and cheat sheets. The theme conveyed was to keep at it, take it short spurts, and read a book you enjoy out loud to get used to saying the punctuation out loud to retrain your brain and perception.

I volunteered to read an ARC copy and this is my honest opinion.

[Angel Leya · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a storyteller, I love finding new ways to get the words out faster. Outline, beats, story structure, world building, etc. But this one has been a head-scratcher. I love the way this book breaks it down, laying out a clear plan to learn, grow, and master this new skill. It's definitely geared toward writers, but anyone looking to get into dictation can benefit from the simple strategy laid out here.

[Carsten Hansen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not too heavy on content

I usually like the books by Sean Platt and co, but this one was a little light in actual content.
It's a quick read and has some good advice and tips but it could have been a lot better.

[Lisa Wells · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very short read. The actual meat of the book is even shorter. That being said, it did give me a couple of tools to use to help me achieve my goal of becoming comfortable with dictation. Time will tell if those tools work for me.

[Aaron Leyshon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm interested to try some of the approaches in this book.

[TNae Wilcox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short and SWEET

To be honest, the other books that I’ve tried are great but something about this one takes the intimidation out of the process for me. It’s definitely worth a read.