So one day, I just came up with this question. What would it be like to write a story using Dragon, or other speech to type programs? An upside would definitely be that you could write more, faster. But I feel like I couldn't speak the story on the spot. Somehow, when I'm actually writing (err...typing), it feels like the ideas flow and build upon eachother...but when actually speaking, and put on the spot, ha, I can't even remember the punchline to that one joke I just had people sitting through for five minutes. What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, Dragon. Anyone ever try it/try writing stories with it? How'd it go?
I experimented with Dragon Naturally Speaking about . . . three years ago now? Maybe four. The main advantage was that I felt less "pressured" to make the story perfect when I was just relating it. But the disadvantages made me go back to typing. First, it kept interpreting "Tom" as "Palm," which was a pain in the arse. Second, I had to speak punctuation, which threw me out of the story. Third, because I am a stickler for grammar, I had to go back over my dictation anyway, correcting whatever errors Dragon had stuck into my work. It was cool, and if Dragon has since improved I might try it again sometime. But for now, I'm sticking with my keyboard.
I've never used Dragon or similar software, but I've thought about using a voice recorder to just speak what's in my head, then type it later. Similar idea...just more time consuming.
I use Dragon. Once it learns your writing style and vocabulary, you can move along pretty quickly with it. You can also dictate into a digital voice recorder, and then import what you've dictated through Dragon intoi a document. You do have to speak the punctuation. If you edit it in afterwards, Dragon won't do as good a job making the right guesses between words that sound the same (or nearly the same). But if you do dictate well formed sentences, and with enough punctuation that the [rogram can recognize the sentence structure, it does a surprisingly good job at guessing the right homophone or capitalizing proper nouns that are common nouns in other contexts. Sometimes, though, it is easier to stop and make corrections with the keyboard rather than try to use voice commands to fix where it guessed wrong, or where you spoke indistinctly. One disadvantage, though, is that I like to multitask. Dragon works best when you are working only on one thing at a time. It tolerates some background noise, but having the TV on in the background distracts Dragon more than it does me. And I don't like wearing a headset for long periods of time, even my nice wireless one.