More on eLearning Narration

April 21, 2008

Steve Anthony, a professional voiceover artist, left a helpful tip in the comments section of the On Narration and eLearning post from a couple of weeks ago:

I’d also like to offer this tip; if the narration is sounding ‘read,’ (no matter who is doing it, either in-house or out-sourced) try loosening up sentence structure. By that, I mean short, informal, sentences along with the use of contractions. For example, change a sentence like,

“In this lesson, we will cover the basics of remote desktop access using remote desktop programming, RDP, along with installation, setup and configuration, and user access,’

to

‘This lesson is about remote desktop access. Specifically, we’ll cover RDP, which is the acronym for remote desktop programming. We’ll start with installing RDP. Next, we’ll cover setup and configuration. And, finally, we’ll look at user access.’

Short and simple.

I agree completely with Steve: the frequent use of contractions is a must if you want a free-flowing, natural-sounding narration. “Write it like you’d say it” seems to be a pretty good rule of thumb for writing narration scripts.

In visiting Steve’s site, I was impressed with his voiceover samples. Definitely not the robo-drone or cheesily dramatic styles I’m used to hearing in professionally-voiced eLearning courses. Have a listen for yourself.

On Steve’s resources page, he linked to a guide by fellow voiceover professional Shelley McIntyre, whose casual, natural style I also really enjoyed. The guide is Formatting Scripts for Voice Talent, and I found it a very helpful read - even for in-house narration work using self-confessed non-professionals (like me!). Check it out.

I’ll definitely be pointing my SME teams to Shelley’s guide before they begin writing their narration scripts.

Posted in Audio, eLearning Design