Dictate first drafts, dialogue, and story outlines at the speed of imagination. Steno turns your voice into text inside any writing app on your Mac, so you can write more words in less time.
A novel is 70,000 to 100,000 words. At a typing speed of 40 words per minute, producing a first draft takes roughly 30 to 40 hours of pure typing time, spread across weeks or months of writing sessions. For genre fiction authors who publish two or more books per year, the math becomes even more demanding. The physical act of getting words onto the page is the single biggest constraint on output for most working novelists.
But the problem goes deeper than speed. Typing engages the analytical, editing part of the brain. As you type, you naturally pause to reconsider word choices, restructure sentences, and second-guess yourself. This internal editor is useful during revision but devastating during first-draft production. It transforms what should be a free-flowing creative process into a halting, stop-and-start ordeal where every paragraph is revised three times before the next one begins.
Storytelling is an oral tradition. For thousands of years, stories were spoken before they were written. The human brain is wired to generate narrative through speech, not through finger movements on a keyboard. Voice dictation reconnects novelists with this fundamental truth: the fastest path from imagination to page is through the voice.
Set a timer, hold the hotkey, and speak your story. Describe what the characters are doing, what they are saying, what they are feeling. Do not worry about perfection. The text appears instantly in Scrivener, Word, Google Docs, or whatever you write in. A 2,000-word chapter that takes two hours to type takes 30 to 40 minutes to dictate.
Dialogue is the easiest element to dictate because it is literally speech. Step into each character's voice and speak their lines. The natural rhythm of spoken language produces dialogue that sounds authentic and alive. Many novelists report that their best dialogue comes from dictation because they perform the lines rather than compose them. The speed advantage is especially dramatic for dialogue-heavy scenes.
Before writing chapters, dictate your plot structure, character backstories, setting descriptions, and thematic notes. Speaking these planning documents lets ideas flow associatively rather than linearly. You often discover connections and possibilities that would not emerge from the more constrained process of typing an outline.
After reading through a draft, dictate your revision notes directly into a separate document. Speak your reactions, flag problems, suggest fixes, and note what is working. This is faster than typing margin comments and captures your gut reactions before analytical thinking dulls them. Steno inserts text into any app, so you can dictate into your notes file while your manuscript is open alongside it.
Consider the production of a typical novel first draft. Here is what the raw writing process looks like with typing versus voice dictation.
| Metric | Typing | Voice with Steno |
|---|---|---|
| Words per hour | 1,000 - 1,500 | 3,000 - 5,000 |
| Daily output (2-hour session) | 2,000 - 3,000 words | 6,000 - 10,000 words |
| Time to draft 80,000-word novel | 8 - 12 weeks | 2 - 4 weeks |
| Physical fatigue after 4 hours | Significant | Minimal |
| Internal editing during drafting | Constant | Minimal |
The difference is transformative. A novelist who dictates can produce two or three first drafts in the time it takes to type one. That extra time goes into revision, which is where novels actually get good. Check the time savings calculator to estimate the impact on your writing goals.
Steno is designed for simplicity. It sits in your Mac menu bar, invisible until you need it. Hold a hotkey, speak, release, and your words appear wherever your cursor is. There is no complex setup, no voice training, no mode switching. It works in Scrivener, Ulysses, Word, Google Docs, Bear, iA Writer, and every other writing application on your Mac because it uses the macOS Accessibility API to insert text directly. The technical architecture ensures instant response with no lag between speaking and seeing your words.
Unlike enterprise dictation software that costs hundreds per month, Steno is built for individual creators. The 30-second setup means you can go from download to dictating your next chapter almost immediately.
Yes. Many authors dictate their entire first drafts. With Steno, you hold the hotkey, speak a passage, and release. The text appears in your writing application instantly. You can dictate in short bursts or long sessions. Authors who dictate regularly report producing 3,000 to 5,000 words per hour compared to 1,000 to 2,000 words per hour typing.
First drafts produced by dictation tend to be more conversational and flowing. Some authors find this is actually an advantage, as it produces prose with better rhythm and a more natural voice. The revision process shapes the dictated draft into polished prose. Many bestselling authors have used dictation for decades precisely because it captures a quality that typed prose often lacks.
Steno's AI transcription handles proper nouns and unusual words with high accuracy. For fantasy or science fiction names that are truly invented, the AI will phonetically approximate them. You may need to correct spellings of highly unusual names on the first occurrence, but the transcription is remarkably good at contextual recognition.
Many authors report that dictation eliminates writer's block almost entirely. The act of speaking engages a different part of the brain than typing. When you speak, you enter a storytelling mode rather than a writing mode. The internal editor that causes you to delete and rewrite every sentence while typing stays quiet when you are simply talking through a scene.
Join thousands of professionals who have reclaimed hours from documentation. Steno is free to download for Mac.
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