How to Write -- Language for the Ear
Your Audience -- Listeners
Always remember that you are writing for a listener, not a reader. A reader can re-read a word, a sentence, a paragraph. A listener does not know what’s coming next, and can’t go back and review what they just heard.
If listeners don’t get it the first time, if they don’t understand each line clearly and immediately, then they may not hear the next line you write because their mind is still deciphering the previous line. The point is to never leave doubt about what you mean.
This approach acknowledges how everyone hears, whether sighted or blind. Hearing is a ear/brain activity. The brain is continually processing audio stimuli, while receiving new stimuli, and anticipating future sounds.
Take your ego out of it. Don’t try to impress with clever writing, complex sentence structure, and exuberant vocabulary. Put yourself in the listener’s place. He/she wants the basic information in unflowery prose. Listeners should forget about your presence and only remember the image you leave in their minds.
Keep It Simple
Audio Description writing is writing for the ear instead of the eye, and it has basic principles that writers use when writing for any presentation that uses the spoken word — radio, programs, TV and radio newscasts, film and video narration, PowerPoint presentations — whenever information is conveyed with the spoken word.
1. Use simple sentences. They’re direct and each holds a thought or image.
The sky is blue.
Sometimes a compound sentence is OK.
The sky is blue and the sea below it is green.
But never, or almost never, use a complex sentence, that is, one with a subjunctive clause. These clauses begin with words like which, that, who, while, when.
The sky, which extends across the entire top of the painting, is blue.
The problem is that a complex sentence asks your listener to hold the first fact in mind — while hearing about another fact until the end of the sentence — which makes a connection to the first fact. A complex sentence unnecessarily asks the brain to decipher your writing. Use two simple sentences instead.
The sky is blue. It extends across the entire top of the painting.
****
2. Use active verbs
The passive voice is weak writing whether for the eye or the ear, but it’s especially troublesome for a listener. For example,
The boy was hit by the car uses the passive voice. Who did what? The car hit the boy. That’s active.
The passive voice can bring doubt to a listener’s mind. It asks the listener’s ear (and brain) to figure out who did what to whom by mentally inverting the information it hears. The worst examples of the passive voice use forms of the verb to be. In this example, both verbs are in the passive voice.
Having been influenced by Cubism, the young artist’s work was reflective of its
principles.
Better to write something like this:
Cubism influenced the young artist, and his work reflected its principles.
*****
3. Write like you talk
First, that means it’s OK to use contractions. People talk with them, don’t they?
Second, keep the vocabulary simple. Beware of the long word that is no better than the short word. An artist doesn’t “utilize” paint. She uses it. Her style isn’t “referred to” as Impressionism. It’s called Impressionism. Don’t “be cognizant” of these long words. Watch for them.
Third, use proper terms from art history and for techniques when appropriate. But when you do, define or explain the term.
The brush strokes are visible because she used the technique called impasto, in which paint is applied very thickly to the canvas, either with a brush or a palette knife.
Undefined jargon can put off listeners and make you sound formal and distant. You should be talking to someone, not giving a lecture or reading a book.
The best way to find out how you sound is to read your words aloud and listen. Are you talking to someone or reading to him or her? It helps to use words like “you” and “yours” and not the stuffy and impersonal “one” or “one’s.” Read these out loud to hear the difference.
The red flowers draw one’s attention to the lower right.
The red flowers draw your attention to the lower right
***********
Always remember that you are writing for a listener, not a reader. A reader can re-read a word, a sentence, a paragraph. A listener does not know what’s coming next, and can’t go back and review what they just heard.
If listeners don’t get it the first time, if they don’t understand each line clearly and immediately, then they may not hear the next line you write because their mind is still deciphering the previous line. The point is to never leave doubt about what you mean.
This approach acknowledges how everyone hears, whether sighted or blind. Hearing is a ear/brain activity. The brain is continually processing audio stimuli, while receiving new stimuli, and anticipating future sounds.
Take your ego out of it. Don’t try to impress with clever writing, complex sentence structure, and exuberant vocabulary. Put yourself in the listener’s place. He/she wants the basic information in unflowery prose. Listeners should forget about your presence and only remember the image you leave in their minds.
Keep It Simple
Audio Description writing is writing for the ear instead of the eye, and it has basic principles that writers use when writing for any presentation that uses the spoken word — radio, programs, TV and radio newscasts, film and video narration, PowerPoint presentations — whenever information is conveyed with the spoken word.
1. Use simple sentences. They’re direct and each holds a thought or image.
The sky is blue.
Sometimes a compound sentence is OK.
The sky is blue and the sea below it is green.
But never, or almost never, use a complex sentence, that is, one with a subjunctive clause. These clauses begin with words like which, that, who, while, when.
The sky, which extends across the entire top of the painting, is blue.
The problem is that a complex sentence asks your listener to hold the first fact in mind — while hearing about another fact until the end of the sentence — which makes a connection to the first fact. A complex sentence unnecessarily asks the brain to decipher your writing. Use two simple sentences instead.
The sky is blue. It extends across the entire top of the painting.
****
2. Use active verbs
The passive voice is weak writing whether for the eye or the ear, but it’s especially troublesome for a listener. For example,
The boy was hit by the car uses the passive voice. Who did what? The car hit the boy. That’s active.
The passive voice can bring doubt to a listener’s mind. It asks the listener’s ear (and brain) to figure out who did what to whom by mentally inverting the information it hears. The worst examples of the passive voice use forms of the verb to be. In this example, both verbs are in the passive voice.
Having been influenced by Cubism, the young artist’s work was reflective of its
principles.
Better to write something like this:
Cubism influenced the young artist, and his work reflected its principles.
*****
3. Write like you talk
First, that means it’s OK to use contractions. People talk with them, don’t they?
Second, keep the vocabulary simple. Beware of the long word that is no better than the short word. An artist doesn’t “utilize” paint. She uses it. Her style isn’t “referred to” as Impressionism. It’s called Impressionism. Don’t “be cognizant” of these long words. Watch for them.
Third, use proper terms from art history and for techniques when appropriate. But when you do, define or explain the term.
The brush strokes are visible because she used the technique called impasto, in which paint is applied very thickly to the canvas, either with a brush or a palette knife.
Undefined jargon can put off listeners and make you sound formal and distant. You should be talking to someone, not giving a lecture or reading a book.
The best way to find out how you sound is to read your words aloud and listen. Are you talking to someone or reading to him or her? It helps to use words like “you” and “yours” and not the stuffy and impersonal “one” or “one’s.” Read these out loud to hear the difference.
The red flowers draw one’s attention to the lower right.
The red flowers draw your attention to the lower right
***********