How I Create My Vocal Stories

Introduction

This is an article on how I create my Vocal stories and articles. I am not a great writing planner and I have difficulty in regarding myself as a writer or creator.

Because of this, I like to have a framework to drop my ideas into, I find it difficult to create with no points of reference, blank pages are scary to me, and maybe that is why I cannot draw or paint very well.

So this is just to show you how I do it and hopefully give you a few pointers on how you create yours.

I was chatting recently and said to someone that writing is in some ways the most versatile art form because you can always change, correct and amend it extremely easily. You seldom have to trash what you have done, unlike art, music, and sculpture.

So How How I Build My Stories

My dad is a builder but I could never get the hang of it, but I do build my stories bit by bit. In the eighties, a contractor I worked with told me that American TV programs usually told you what was going to happen, then let you watch the program, then they told you what had happened.

I tend to construct all my stories with an introductory section, usually with a Youtube video so that the reader can listen as they read, then there is the main part of the story, which may be a poem or a playlist or a story or a section like the one you are reading now.

I used to use the video as my main image, but this causes issues if the video is removed from Youtube, if it is in the body of the story then it can be corrected by relinking or removing using Vocal's Quickedit.

I tend to use NightCafe to generate images. This is simple to avoid possible copyright issues. I make my work available for free on Pixabay if anyone wants to use any of my work.

I then proceed to write whatever I am going to write. As preparation, I often go for long walks and let ideas percolate in my head and when I am in front of my computer I begin.

Maybe it's just me but I am a fan of using emojis to separate verses and sections in poetry, someone once suggested it to be and it does add a little visual color to my poetry. When I look at my older poems I sometimes feel that they are lacking a little.

Vocal's editor is fairly limited but is also robust. There is no justification, different fonts or font sizes, and no color, but my work round is to design the piece in Google Docs and then take a screenshot which you can then include in your story. This is an example of mine.

It's a preference of mine that what I am reading should be visually pleasing as well as containing something worth reading, and I have mentioned this before but the formatting of my Great friend Les's work has influenced my work a lot. The use of video and images in this makes this a very pleasant and engaging read. Also by including the embedded link it makes this piece a more pleasant read. You can include links using the format bar (sometimes you have no choice) but I think embedded is more engaging.

Often people don't know about including links or formatting so I produced this guide

As you read this you can probably see how I have built this, and may even think of using it as a framework for your own stories.

Conclusion

I usually finish with a concluding piece, but I hope this has been informative and helpful and given you an idea or two.

If you want to meet like-minded creators please join us in the Vocal Social Society on Facebook.

I included "Working On A Dream" by Bruce Springsteen, because I think that is what we are all doing here, and that is a wonderful thing to work on.