Great characters feel real. They talk, act, and respond to stress in ways we recognize, with their own personal character voice. We can relate to them because they seem human.
To write a character that leaps off the page, we need to know her deeply. We need to understand her thoughts and feelings. If our audience is going to empathize with her, we have to first.
Voice Prompts are audio files that provide greetings or informational messages, usually within a telephone voice processing system. They can be sentences, phrases or individual words. Not to be confused with IVR (interactional voice response) which is telephony technology that can process a combination of touch tones and voice inputs. Get professional voice recordings today. Need more script information? Try our free script guide for more ideas on how to create professional phone menu scripts. Or check out our store for an instant price quote on professionally recorded sound clips and audio prompts.
3 Writing Prompts to Discover Your Character’s Voice
- Prompts are available in the telephone systems, like Music on Hold, IVR prompts, call transfer, etc. You may want to custom your own voice prompt to make it more meaningful and suitable for your different cases. Custom voice prompts help business to direct callers clearly and communicate effectively while building up a professional image.
- In the spirit of open source, GM Voices is offering Asterisk replacement prompt sets for FREE. With these standard voice files, all you need is custom messaging from GM Voices’ Asterisk eCommerce to perfect your Voice Brand. This is by far the easiest and most economical way to provide a one-voice caller experience.
- PromptVoice Studio is a self-serve solution, providing end users with access to superior quality voice prompts and resellers with a recurring revenue stream and an invaluable addition to their existing portfolio. Hosted on Hold takes the delivery of in-queue and on-hold messaging and music to a whole new and exciting level.
I find it easy to write characters who are like me, who see the world like I see it. Unfortunately, if all my characters are like me, my books are going to be pretty predictable. If we want our characters to stand out, we are going to have to write some who are different than us, to find a unique character voice for each one that’s different from our own.
Here are three tricks I use to develop characters so they sound less like me and more like themselves:
1. Put your character on the couch.
In therapy, people talk freely about their inner thoughts and feelings. To get to know your character, pretend to be her therapist. Imagine she walks into your office and sits down on a couch across from you.
Frontpage 2007 download for mac. Start the session with the question, “Thanks for coming in today. What do you want to talk about?” As your character talks, make sure you get to the heart of her concerns with questions like “How does that make you feel?” and “What were you thinking when that happened?”
Additionally, when your character says something you find unusual or exaggerated, ask your character to elaborate on it. One way to do this is to reflect back to your character what she said. “So what I hear you saying is …” This will give your character the opportunity to think through what she said and comment on her own thoughts and feelings.
Focus on writing the dialogue only. Don’t worry about how your character is sitting or what the room looks like. Just ask your character questions and let her talk.
2. Write your character’s morning routine.
The point of writing your character’s morning routine is to get a feeling for what your character is like when the spotlight isn’t on her, when life is mundane. If you know how your character acts and feels under normal circumstances, you will get a better feel for how they are when circumstances force them to change. The transformation you write for her will be clearer.
What’s the first thing your character does when she wakes up? Does she love mornings or hate them? What does she think when she first looks in the mirror? Does she brush her teeth before or after breakfast? How does she fix her coffee? What does she eat? Is it the same thing every morning or does she try and change it up?
Answer these questions by writing a scene that starts with your character waking up in the morning.
3. Create a mood spectrum.
During a story, your character is going to face a lot of different circumstances. Some of these situations will make your character happy. Some of them will make your character upset.
Draw a line on a piece of paper. On the left side of the line write, “Terrible Mood.” One the right, write, “Amazing Mood.” Then, in the middle, write the words, “Normal Mood.”
Under the words “Normal Mood,” write six adjectives that describe how your character behaves when everything is routine. How does your character act under ordinary circumstances?
Now, imagine your character just got fantastic news. Write six adjectives under the words “Amazing Mood” that describe how your character behaves when everything is going her way.
Finally, imagine something awful happened and your character is incredibly sad. Write six adjectives under the words “Terrible Mood.”
Your final step is to put the whole picture together. Starting in the middle, read your line out loud to yourself.
“When my character is in a normal mood, she is _______________. When good things happen and she is in an amazing mood, she is _______________; but when bad things happen and she is in a terrible mood, she is _______________.”
Now pick an event that would move your character from a normal mood to an extreme mood. Write that scene and convey your character’s transformation.
Your Characters Are Unique
Be adventurous and create a diverse set of characters that act, think, feel, and respond to things differently than you do by getting to know them before you write them. Your audience will be more likely to connect with your characters if you connect with them first.
How do you get to know your character and discover their unique character voice?Let us know in the comments.
PRACTICE
Free Voice Prompts
Pick one of the three exercises above and spend fifteen minutes doing it. Post your work in the comments so we can all enjoy it.
Easing The Burden Of Unprecedented Customer Queries
It’s difficult at the best of times to maintain good customer relationships, and businesses continue to evaluate their processes constantly to achieve this. However, most businesses, large and small, are facing unprecedented amounts of communication demands. Dealing with this without support can be detrimental for your business once we exit this long tunnel and face the light of a new reality.
Being able to utilise what tech advantages are out there and channel incoming requests efficiently enables staff to maintain their core functions within an organisation whether it be office based, club, restaurant, contact centre or working from home. /encounters-from-africa-short-stories-pdf.html.
Professional Voice Prompts are the perfect way to funnel incoming requests in an effective manner in order for the best possible customer experience, relieving staff stress and any unintended consumer frustrations. Whilst you can do some of this yourself, more often than not it can be time-consuming. But that has now changed with Elite Group offering COVID-19 professional voice prompts for businesses free of charge.
Voice Prompts
Voice Prompts are audio files that provide greetings or informational messages, usually within a telephone voice processing system. They can be sentences, phrases or individual words. Not to be confused with IVR (interactional voice response) which is telephony technology that can process a combination of touch tones and voice inputs.
Voice prompts generally form part of the initial point of contact for clients when trying to interact with a business and if this feels unprofessional and ineffective it can lead to customer frustration and dissatisfaction which in turn leads to loss of customers and revenue. According to research by Esteban Kolsky, 13% of unhappy customers will share their complaint with 15 or more people. And those that don’t complain simply go elsewhere.
Why Use Professional Voices For Call Prompting?
As outlined above there are many benefits from professionalism through to customer satisfaction but one of the biggest factors at this point in time is, it’s FREE! Elite group have combined with our partners to provide a selection of professional voice prompts, dealing with COVID-19, free for all kinds of businesses.
Elite Group is always trying to improve our customer experiences any way we can, so when the opportunity arose to offer help to everyone with free professional call prompt voices, we took it. We see the advantages of doing whatever we can to help navigate and support any kind of organisation through the current climate, in the end, it’s a win/win for everybody.
Not Just For Elite Clients
Professional prompt voicing is a creative product that we normally provide as an additional add-on, that is chargeable and attached to a core package. However, these aren’t normal times and we are extremely conscious of the need for businesses to support other businesses, so not only is this offer available to Elite clients, it’s for anyone that needs it.
Examples
Bose Soundsport Free Voice Prompts
‘In line with government guidelines on Coronavirus, the club is now closed for the foreseeable future. But we’ll be using the time to plan some fantastic new events so we can come back fresher than ever. Keep an eye on our website for details.’
‘You’ll be glad to know we’ve set the necessary processes and technologies in place to allow our business to continue to serve you. Even though many of our staff are working remotely, we’re open and ready to help…’
‘Following the most recent government advice on Coronavirus, the pub is now closed for the foreseeable future. We’ll reopen as soon as we’re advised it’s right to do so.’
‘We’re pleased to confirm that our contact centre has re-opened, but due to high demand, it might take longer than we’d like to get to your call. Thanks for your patience, we’ll be with you as quickly as possible.’
Free Professional Voice Prompts
If you have an appropriate phone system and know how to operate it, you can download the prompts from here.
Free Ivr Voice Prompts
If you aren’t sure or don’t have an appropriate system give us a call and we’ll help and support you in whatever way we can.