Hi all. We’re the Murmurtale team, the developers of Murmurtale, a Mac dictation app for fiction writers. We have no connection to Literature & Latte; this is a third-party tool that types into the app you write in.
Our product is at the bottom of this post. Most of it is what we’ve learned about drafting fiction by voice into Scrivener on a Mac, and it works with whatever tool you use, including the Dictation that’s already built into macOS.
1. Start with what you have.
Apple’s Dictation is free and already on your Mac, and Scrivener supports it: Edit ▸ Start Dictation… in Scrivener’s menu. Turn it on in System Settings ▸ Keyboard ▸ Dictation and pick a shortcut. You can also record on your phone during a walk and transcribe it later. Many authors draft that way and do the cleanup at the desk.
2. Plan the scene in three lines before you talk.
Who’s in it, what they want, and how it ends. The synopsis card for the scene is a handy place for those three lines. Dictating without a plan tends to wander. With one, you can talk through a scene in a single go.
3. Talk in scenes, not chapters.
Scrivener already lets you keep a separate document for each scene in the Draft folder, which suits dictation well. Click into one scene in the Binder, talk it through, and move on to the next. If a line comes out wrong, say it again and keep going. Don’t stop to correct it. If you’d rather not see the rest of the project while you talk, Composition Mode (View ▸ Enter Composition Mode, ⌥⌘F; Esc to leave) blanks out everything but the page.
4. Dialogue is where dictation shines, and where cleanup piles up.
Saying your characters’ lines out loud often gives you more natural dialogue. The cost is punctuation: quotation marks, a new paragraph for each speaker, and commas before dialogue tags. Most dictation tools let you say “comma” or “new paragraph”. Some writers do that, and others leave it all for the edit. If quotes from any dictation tool come in straight rather than curly, select the text and use Edit ▸ Transformations ▸ Quotes to Smart Quotes.
5. Keep a names list.
Fantasy names, unusual spellings and invented places are what dictation gets wrong most often. Keep the list in a document in your Research folder (anywhere outside the Draft folder works), or in a scene’s Document Notes in the inspector for names that only matter there. Afterwards, fix repeat offenders across the whole manuscript with Edit ▸ Find ▸ Project Replace…. The manual warns that Project Replace can’t be undone, so make a backup first (File ▸ Back Up ▸ Back Up To…) and consider the Whole Word option.
6. Edit by keyboard, in passes.
Read the whole draft once without fixing anything. Then fix names and punctuation. Then do the real revision. Dictated drafts are rough, just as typed first drafts are.
7. Mic and room.
A headset or a desk mic close to your mouth helps more than an expensive mic across the room. A quiet room with soft furnishings helps too.
Where Murmurtale fits. (We’re the developer, so take this as our own description.)
We built Murmurtale for the dialogue problem in step 4. You click into the app you already write in, hold a key, speak, and let go, and the text lands where your cursor was. In Fiction mode with the cloud engine, dialogue goes in quotes and a new paragraph starts when the speaker changes. Character and place names are spelled the way you’ve taught it, with dictionaries you can switch per book.
It formats what you said and stops there. You get punctuation, capitals, quotation marks and paragraph breaks. It doesn’t write for you, add sentences or continue your scene. Your words, not an AI rewrite.
- Two modes, chosen by the key you hold: fn for Fiction, right Option for Plain.
- Two engines: a cloud engine (the default on Pro and in the trial) and an on-device engine that works offline. The on-device engine adds quotes only to dialogue with a tag like “she said”.
- Honest limits: the text lands when you release the key, not word by word. English only.
- Requirements: an Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or newer) with macOS 14 or later. Signup is open in the United States only.
- Pricing:
- The download is free, and a free account gets 5,000 on-device words a month.
- Pro is $14.99 a month or $119 a year, with 60,000 cloud words a month and unlimited on-device dictation.
- New accounts get a free trial of 14 days or 20,000 cloud words, whichever comes first, and no card is needed.
We’ll answer questions in this topic. For account problems, write to support@murmurtale.com. We’d also like to hear how you dictate into Scrivener now, whatever tool you use.
The Murmurtale team (developer of Murmurtale)