Scribbling for Ears Not Eyes
You’re scribbling a story to drop as an audiobook, podcast, or narrated YouTube short. You’re visualizing a moody voice actor to bring your protag to life. Or an AI narrator you trained to sound like a veteran CIA field agent. Either way, you’re no longer scribbling for producers and execs who are readers. You’re scribbling for listeners.
This requires its own rhythm, clarity, and pace. Descriptive sentences become spoken beats of breath. The vernacular of characters will surf the inner ear canals of your audience. So here are some tips and tricks to keep in mind when scribbling stories that won’t just be read, but will also be heard.
Clarity Is King: Listeners don’t get to re-read a paragraph. They’re washing dishes, walking the dog, or zoning out on the subway. Keep your sentence structure clean. Avoid overloading names or jargon upfront. Re-introduce key ideas naturally to help people stay with you. You’re not dumbing things down. If the listener ever has to stop and think, you’ve probably lost them.
Rhythm Is Your Superpower: Audio loves rhythm. You’re not just typing text. You’re dictating a performance. Vary sentence lengths. Short sentences for tension. Longer for flow. Read your work out loud. If you trip over a line, your narrator will, too. White space becomes breath. Use it.
Dialog Must Carry Voice: In text, you can lean on formatting, inner thoughts, or visual cues. In audio, dialogue does the heavy lifting. Especially if a single narrator is performing multiple characters (or you train an AI to differentiate them). So keep character voices distinct. Minimize the need for “he said/she said” by writing with vocal rhythm and personality. Deliver subtext in how something is said, not just what’s said.
Repetition as a Feature, Not a Flaw: Repetition helps the ear remember. That’s why oral traditions rely on it, and why it works great in audio fiction. Repeat key phrases, symbols, or rhythms. Use callbacks and mirrored structure to anchor your themes. Don’t fear the echo if it reinforces a mood or meaning.
Lean into Point of View: Audio is intimate. A narrator talking directly into your skull. Use that. First-person POV? Make it confessional, raw, like a journal. Third-person limited? Filter everything through that character’s senses and emotions. Multi-POV? Each voice must feel like its own frequency with a different cadence, vocabulary, and rhythm. Scribble your story through your characters, not just about them.
Anchor the Listener in Space and Emotion: You don’t have visuals. So, create clarity through: Sound-anchored setting: “The hum of the fridge was the only thing keeping her grounded.” Sensory grounding: “His boots crunched the frostbitten gravel as he stepped into the hangar.” Emotional check-ins: “She swallowed the apology and said nothing.” We don’t need a cinematic camera move. We need a feeling to connect with.
Don’t Write for the Page: Most of us grew up thinking “good writing” means complex sentences, literary metaphors, and clever formatting. But if your story is heard instead of read, the rules shift. Drop the visual tricks. Favor the spoken voice over the written. Trust your narrator (or AI model) to carry mood, tone, and nuance. Think of your prose like a film score. It shouldn’t distract. It should support.
Short-Form Audio Is a Playground: Before committing to a 90-minute audiobook, test your world with a 60-second voicemail from your protagonist. Or a two-minute field report from a side character. Maybe a fake podcast clip. These are portable, cheap, and tailor-made for TikTok, Substack, or newsletter extras. They will teach you a ton about how your story sounds.
Scribbling for audio isn’t hard. It’s just different. It’s a chance to rewire your beginner’s brain and think like an extroverted performer, not just an introverted scribe. Your goal isn’t to impress people with pretty prose. It’s to move them with real-time emotion. Ears first. Eyes later. Now, get out there and listen to your own words. Literally.
