You have a text and you want to turn it into a story to listen to. Publishing on Voctale takes no special technical skill: you need to understand how a story is put together and follow the steps in the right order. This guide takes you from text to publication, up to the moment your story enters the catalogue with no surprises.
How a story is built: chapters and scenes
On Voctale a story is made of chapters, and each chapter of scenes. The scene is the unit you listen to: a text with its voice. In a linear story the scenes follow in the order you write them, from start to finish. In an interactive story some scenes end with a branch and lead to others, so the telling changes with the listener's choices.
Before you open the editor it helps to have this layout clear, perhaps on paper: which chapters, how many scenes, and in interactive stories which scenes lead to which. It is the structure that holds everything else together, and clearing it up now saves you from reworking the order after you have already uploaded the audio.
Creating the story and writing the scenes
From the author area, which you find in your profile, you create a new audiobook and choose whether it is linear, interactive or a podcast. Then you add the chapters and, inside each, the scenes with their text. The first scene is marked as the start; in interactive stories, the scenes that close a path are marked as endings, so the system knows where the story can end.
You can save and come back to it at any time. Until you publish, the story stays a draft only you can see: no one finds it in the catalogue, and you can change it as often as you like. This is the right moment to reread the texts, revise the order of the scenes and check that every branch leads somewhere.
Adding the voices and publishing
Audio is added scene by scene. You can upload your own recorded files or hand the reading to a voice, depending on how you want the story to sound; the choice between the two is explained in the guide on recording with your own voice or having it adapted. Voctale normalises the formats, so the file type matters little. Do listen to each scene after uploading, though, to check the audio is the right one and nothing is cut off.
When the story is complete, a final check confirms every scene has its audio, the rights are in order and no branch leaves a path without an ending. Once that passes, you can publish, and from then on the story enters the catalogue with the others. If you want your readers to find it near similar titles, you can also gather it into a reading list. The first story teaches the most: once it is published, the second will come to you far more naturally.
