The average typist produces 40–60 words per minute. The average speaker produces 120–150 words per minute. That gap — 2x to 3x — is why dictation has become a serious productivity tool for working fiction authors, not just an accessibility accommodation. Authors who have made the switch successfully report sustained output of 2,000–5,000 words per hour, compared to the 500–1,500 words per hour typical of keyboard drafting.
The caveat: the transition is genuinely difficult, the learning curve takes weeks, and your first dictated sessions will almost certainly be slower than typing. If you go in with realistic expectations, dictation is worth the investment for writers who need to produce consistently high word counts.
Why Dictation Is Different From Typing
When you type, you have the natural affordance of pausing — fingers hovering, thinking, then resuming. The keyboard supports the natural rhythms of conscious composition. When you dictate, pauses produce silence (or unwanted results, depending on your software). Speaking prose requires you to think ahead of the words coming out of your mouth — to have the next clause ready before the current one is finished.
This is a real cognitive skill, and it doesn't come immediately. Most writers who try dictation for the first time describe the experience as halting and unnatural. The prose quality is often lower in the first attempts — more conversational, less controlled. Sentences run on; scene transitions are abrupt; the inner editor can't keep up with the speaking pace.
This is normal. It passes. After 2–4 weeks of consistent practice, most writers find the dictation voice starts to feel natural. The prose style shifts — typically toward cleaner, more direct sentences and stronger dialogue — and the word count goes up substantially.
Software Options
Dragon NaturallySpeaking (Dragon Professional Individual)
Dragon remains the gold standard for accuracy. At approximately $300 for the desktop software, it's the most expensive option but the most powerful. Dragon trains on your voice over time, improving accuracy with use. It handles punctuation commands naturally ("comma," "period," "open quotes," "new paragraph") and is fast enough to keep up with rapid dictation without lag. Authors who dictate professionally — particularly those producing high volumes — typically use Dragon.
Dragon runs on Windows. Dragon for Mac was discontinued in 2022, leaving Mac users without a dedicated option at this quality level.
Google Docs Voice Typing
Free, browser-based, and surprisingly accurate for a no-cost tool. Available in Google Docs under Tools → Voice Typing. Works in Chrome on any platform. Accuracy is lower than Dragon for accents and specialized vocabulary, but for straightforward prose dictation in a quiet environment, it's genuinely serviceable. Punctuation commands work: say "period," "comma," "new line." The main limitations are lag under poor internet connections and the inability to train the model on your specific voice.
Apple Dictation
Built into macOS and iOS. On Mac (macOS Monterey and later), enhanced dictation works offline with reasonable accuracy. Activate it with the double-press of the Function key. Punctuation commands work similarly to Google Docs. Not as accurate as Dragon, but free, always available, and good enough for fiction drafting if you're already in the Apple ecosystem.
The "Dictate to Otter.ai Then Paste" Workflow
Some authors prefer a mobile-first workflow: dictate into Otter.ai (a transcription service with a free tier) while walking, then paste the transcript into their writing document and clean it up. Otter.ai is designed for meeting transcription rather than literary prose, so accuracy on fictional dialogue and unusual character names is lower than Dragon. But the ability to dictate while in motion — while walking the dog, on a lunch walk, during a commute — makes it attractive for capturing scenes when you're not at your desk.
This workflow produces rough material that needs cleanup rather than clean prose, but for writers whose blocks come from sitting at a desk, the physical freedom can break the mental constraint.
Dictating While Walking
Several prolific authors — most notably Kevin J. Anderson, who has written over 175 novels and has used walking dictation for decades — credit walking dictation as their primary productivity tool. Walking while dictating serves two functions: it removes the physical constraint of sitting at a desk, and the mild physical activity seems to disinhibit narrative thinking for many writers. Scenes that wouldn't come while staring at a blank page emerge more naturally during movement.
The setup: a good directional microphone or wireless earbuds with microphone, Dragon or a phone-based transcription app, and a route you know well enough to walk without attention. Voice recorders are another option — dictate to audio, then transcribe later (either manually or with a transcription service).
What Dictated Prose Sounds Like
Dictated prose has a characteristic texture before editing. It tends to be:
- More conversational: Sentences follow natural speech patterns rather than literary construction. The voice is often stronger because it's genuinely spoken.
- Looser on description: Writers tend to rush through descriptive passages when dictating and linger in dialogue. Scene-setting often needs expansion in revision.
- More repetitive in vocabulary: Without a thesaurus at hand, the same words recur. Easy to address in revision.
- Dialogue-heavy: Dictation flows most naturally when characters are talking. Many dictation writers find their dialogue noticeably stronger than their typed prose.
None of these are permanent flaws — they're first-draft characteristics that revision addresses. The key insight is that 3,000 words of rough dictated prose, edited in an hour, often produces better output than 800 carefully typed words that never need editing.
Handling Punctuation
Standard punctuation commands for most dictation software:
- Say "period" or "full stop" for a period
- Say "comma" for a comma
- Say "open quote" and "close quote" for dialogue
- Say "new paragraph" or "new line" for paragraph breaks
- Say "exclamation mark," "question mark," "ellipsis," "em dash" as needed
- Say "colon," "semicolon," "open parenthesis / close parenthesis"
It takes a week to make these commands feel automatic. Most dictation writers report that after the first 10–15 hours of practice, punctuation commands become as natural as hitting the keyboard equivalent.
Training Your Voice Model
Dragon and some other tools allow you to train the voice recognition on your specific voice and vocabulary. In Dragon, you can add custom words — character names, place names, invented terms — so they're recognized accurately. You can also run Dragon's built-in accuracy tuning, which processes documents you've written to learn your vocabulary distribution. This training is cumulative: the software becomes measurably more accurate over the first several weeks of use.
Once you've dictated and revised your way to a completed manuscript, the next step is getting professional editorial feedback before your draft is final. EditRoast reviews manuscripts regardless of how they were written — dictated, typed, or any combination — and delivers chapter-by-chapter notes on structure, pacing, and prose quality.