"How's That Again?": Writing for the Voice
By Kathie Stamps

What's the difference between journalism and broadcast copywriting? Body parts. When readers pick up a magazine or monitor, they use eyeballs and half a brain. But when a voice-over (VO) artist reads your copy for a radio or television commercial, tongues and lungs come into play... in addition to cranial and ocular anatomy.

If you're writing broadcast commercials, underwriting credit announcements, CD-ROMs, multimedia, corporate videos, scripts for awards banquets, telephone on-hold messages, computer-based training modules, newscasts, speeches or anything else involving a narrator or vocal communicator -- live or recorded -- here are some down-and-dirty tenets of writing for the voice.

Go clause-less

Clauses, particularly of the nonrestrictive variety, are anathemas to narrators. Complex sentences may be fine for a keyboard, what with commas and our eyes' ability to reread an entire paragraph and all, but they're difficult to read aloud (lung capacity being what it is these days). Even if the narrator can pull it off, clauses actually make unnecessary work for your listener, the end-user. The audience listening to your message doesn't have access to your original text. They can't follow along with their own eyes, but have to rely on their memory to connect subjects and predicates with parenthetical phrases. Don't make the end-user work so hard to understand your message.

Let Word Count Clock It

The average voice comfortably speaks 2.5 words per second, so a basic :60 radio spot will be 150 words. This is a guideline, not canon law. The formula works great if you think three pages of single-spaced text can be read in thirty seconds, or if you expect a five-word slogan to fill a 15-minute infomercial. (Extremes are just so nasty, aren't they?) If you want "white space" in the finished product, you'll need fewer words; a hard-sell, speed-demon delivery can handle more words.

Format for sound

Words typed in italics or all caps mean EMPHASIZE THIS. Branding, schmanding; use upper/lower for your client's name.

Keep formatting

Scripts should be double-spaced and 12-point type size. Arial, Times; serif, sans serif; whatever. Just don't use a teeny-tiny-dear-God-where-are-my-reading-glasses font. Plus, there's a microphone between the human face and the script, so the words are a bit farther away than people would normally hold a piece of paper. Why double-spaced text? First of all, it's just easier to read. And two, almost every VO talent takes a pencil to the recording booth to make diacritical marks: a shorthand system of parentheses or squiggles or hash marks to denote vocal inflection. Plus, there's usually a last-minute change in the copy, or a typo. If the text is single-spaced, there's simply no room to write on the page.

And keep formatting

Narrations or other long-form projects require multiple pages of text. Each page should end at a complete sentence (remember widows and orphans?). Paper rattles in the microphone when it's moved, so you're going to get a much smoother read if the VO talent doesn't have to turn a page to finish a sentence.

Revisions happen

Here's a handy-dandy hint for writers who slash as producers in the studio: Let the talent handwrite revisions on the paper. People can read their own handwriting better than a stranger's. Another tip for a writer/producer is to listen to the recording session while reading along with the script, then listen to playback with your eyes closed. Pretend you're the audience who will hear this message -- they can't read the script, after all -- and check for any misunderstood words or awkward homophones.

Use common contractions

"When you're in an airport" rolls off the tongue -- and subsequently into the ear of a listener -- easier than "When you are in an airport..." Obviously, you don't want to use every single possible contraction throughout an entire Tour of Our Fine City video, but avoiding them entirely is equally annoying. One exception, due to its sound, is the word "can't." Listen to it being said aloud. "Can" and "can't" sound way too close for comfort, I don't care how carefully enunciated that 't' is. Use 'cannot' if you can.

Separate the sibilants

Words ending with and then beginning with the same sound are tricky. It's why a local restaurant will offer "ice tea" on its menu as opposed to "iced tea." The ending 'd' and beginning 't' sound the same when these words are said out loud, so some people think they're supposed to be written the way they sound. As a writer, you know better, of course. As a copywriter for voice-over artists, watch out for potential oral obstacles. For example, rather than typing verbatim from the retailer's scribbles -- "Save 50 percent on blouses, shirts, skirts, suits, shorts, and jackets," try splitting them into pairs. "Save 50 percent on blouses and shirts, shorts and skirts, jackets and suits."

Spell out words

If you type "NYC," the talent will read it as three letters, three syllables. If you want it pronounced "New York City," have your keyboard say so. If you write "FBI," there's no way the VO artist will accidentally say "Federal Bureau of Investigation." When it comes to pronunciations, forget the branding. Spell it out. The client's name is BlahBlah Inc., but how do you want "Inc." pronounced? Go ahead and type "Incorporated" and be done with it. The audience isn't going to see the script, remember?

Keep spelling

How do you want "Aug.15-20" to be read? August 15th through the 20th, August 15 to 20, August 15th to the 20th -- pick one and write it that way. Do you want a dollar sign pronounced? If so, write "dollars." If not, leave it out. An item could be on sale for "49-95" or "23-thousand dollars." Hyphens can be fabulous, by the way (except when they stand for the word 'to,' that is). Read these phone numbers out loud: 555-42-42 and 555-4-2-4-2. It's not that one is right and the other is wrong; it just depends on how you want it pronounced. If your message is for a radio commercial -- or any audio without PowerPoint reinforcement -- the audience has no other frame of reference besides earballs. "Sixteen" can be heard as "sixty." If you're listing the phone number twice, consider doing it both ways: "555-15-16; that's 555-1-5-1-6." Sometimes, writing for the voice simply has to do with client/producer decisions. (Hey, did you catch that last one? How do you pronounce a slash, huh? Huh? "Client or producer." "Client and producer." "Client-producer.")

Why all the fuss?

It's not that voice-over artists are stupid. We're really not. It's our job to communicate your message to an audience. Emphasis on communicate, not translate. The narrator's brain is interpreting words in the first place, but when a double interpretation is required, finesse and nuance can be lost. For example, the script says "dept." and it happens to fall at the end of a line. The talent has to backtrack and think, "Oh wait, don't say dept, say department. Don't go down on the inflection, keep it steady because the sentence isn't over yet." Brain hiccup, hello.

Two quick war stories: I was voicing a piece for a university's fundraising video. Academicians had written the script and one line was, "Since World War 11, the College of Whatever has done this and that..." I kid you not -- World War Eleven?! Not only did they not spell out "Two," the committee didn't know a Roman I from an Arabic 1? Second incident, and this was for a commercial written by someone who should've known better -- an ad agency copywriter: I read the phone number the way it was written: 800-blahblah. After the take, he said -- and was kinda snarky about it, actually -- "Um, can you say 1-800 instead of 800?" All righty, then...

Kathie Stamps works both sides of the microphone as an independent writer and voice-over artist. Her voice can currently be heard on the television commercial for Dexatrim's all-in-one energy bar, or visit www.stampscommunications.com/audiosamples.html for her online demo.

Sponsored links

Ring binders

 

Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer!

How to find a book publisher

Home

Text on this site Copyright © 1998-2007 Absolute Write, all rights reserved.
Please contact the authors if you'd like to reprint articles on this site.  All copyrights are retained by original authors.  And plagiarizers will be rounded up, handcuffed, and stuck into a very small and humid room wherein they must listen to Barney sing the "I Love You, You Love Me" song over and over again.

writers writing software