1. Bose Soundsport Free Voice Prompts
2. Free Voice Prompts
3. Freepbx Voice Prompts

3 Writing Prompts to Discover Your Character’s Voice. 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. Download Free IVR Audio Prompts Generic IVR prompts for use with MyOffice PBX auto attendants, on-hold messages, voicemail and other greetings. You can customize and edit these files with Audacity®. Audacity is a free, open source, cross-platform software for recording and editing sounds.

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.

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. Scripts for voice mail greetings, Auto Attendant Messages, IVR Voice prompts, PBX, VOIP phone greetings and messages. Sample Scripts for business phone greetings and messages.Example scripts for Cell phone, Mobile Phone, Smart Phone voicemail greeting. Hear samples of scripts for your voicemail and auto attendant.

3 Writing Prompts to Discover Your Character’s Voice

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.

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

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.

We frequently receive requests asking how best to create custom voice prompts to use with Asterisk® or 3CX® PBXs. Of course, our first recommendation is to always direct folks to Allison Smith whose voice prompts for Asterisk are legendary. But, for those on a tight budget, recordings by a professional voice talent may not be a viable option. So, today, in the Christmas spirit, we want to deliver the next best thing with synthesized voice prompts that are second to none. For regular readers of Nerd Vittles, you’re already aware of our enthusiasm for IBM’s new TTS offerings. You can try them out for yourself by clicking View Demo here. Or you can sample the Weather Report for 3CX that we uploaded to SoundCloud:

Cost issues aside, other users may need voice prompts for VoIP applications that require a language other than English. With IBM’s TTS offerings, you have quite a selection of voices and languages from which to choose:

We already have delivered adaptations of some of our News and Weather TTS applications for both Asterisk and 3CX platforms. But there are other occasions where you may want to build interactive IVRs or custom applications that require custom voice prompts to obtain information from callers such as requests for a name, a phone number, a part number, a location, a department, or many other pieces of data that are used to formulate data base queries. And now there’s a simple, professional, and free way to create these voice prompts using IBM’s TTS platform and Incredible PBX® 13-13. The first million characters of TTS synthesis and the resultant voice files are free every month. That will be more than ample for almost all of our users. To get started, you’ll need to set up a free account with IBM Bluemix and install Incredible PBX 13-13 on a platform of your choice: a dedicated server, a virtual machine on your desktop PC using VirtualBox, or a cloud-based server.

Getting Started with IBM Bluemix TTS Service

NOV. 1 UPDATE: IBM has moved the goal posts effective December 1, 2018:

You can start your free, 30-day trial of IBM Bluemix services without providing a credit card. Just sign up here. Once your account is activated, here’s how to obtain credentials for the TTS service to use with Incredible PBX 13-13. Start by logging in to your IBM Bluemix account. Once you’re logged in, click on your account name (1) in the upper right corner of your web page to reveal the pull-down to select your Region, Organization, and Space. Follow the blue links at the bottom of the pull-down menu to create an Organization and Space for TTS.

Next, click the Menu icon which is displayed as three horizontal bars on the left side of the web page. Choose Watson. Click Create Watson Service and select Text to Speech from the applications listing. Watson will generate a new TTS service template and display it. Make certain that your Region, Organization, and Space are shown correctly. Then verify that the Standard Pricing Plan is selected. When everything is correct, click the Create button.

When your Text to Speech application displays, click Service Credentials and then click New Credential (+). When the Add New Credential dialog appears, leave the default settings as they are and click Add. Your Credentials Listing then will appear. Click View Credentials beside the new entry you just created. Write down your URL, username, and password. You’ll need these later to configure the IBM Bluemix TTS service. Logout of the IBM Cloud by clicking on the little face in the upper right corner of your browser window and choose Log Out. Confirm that you do, indeed, wish to log out.

Getting Started with Incredible PBX 13-13

We won’t repeat the tutorial that walks you through installation of Incredible PBX 13-13. Just follow the steps outlined here. Once your server is up and running, log into your server as root using SSH or Putty. We need to add MP3 support to the SOX application before we can create voice prompts reliably with IBM’s Bluemix TTS service. Here’s how:

Bose Soundsport Free Voice Prompts

Installing the Voice Prompts Script for TTS

Now we’re ready to install the Nerd Vittles Voice Prompts script that we’ll use to actually create the custom voice prompts. While you’re still logged into your server as root with SSH or Putty, issue the following commands:

Adding Your Credentials to the Script

Using your favorite editor, it’s time to add your IBM TTS credentials to the Voice Prompt script: nano -w ibmprompt.php. Simply replace the x’s in $IBM_username and $IBM_password with your credentials from above. If you prefer a different voice for your voice prompts, update the $IBM_voice option using the examples shown below. For example, for the Brazilian Portuguese voice, use $IBM_voice = 'pt-BR_IsabelaVoice'. Verify that the $IBM_url matches what was provided with your credentials. Once you’ve updated the entries, save the file: Ctrl-X, Y, and ENTER.

Taking Voice Prompts Script for a Test Drive

Now we’re ready to try thing out. The syntax while logged into the /root folder looks like this. If creating a prompt in a different language, text should be in native language, not English.

Once the voice prompt is generated, you’ll find voiceprompt.wav in the /root folder. You can rename it and move it to a suitable location to meet your requirements. Enjoy!

Free Voice Prompts

Originally published: Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Support Issues. With any application as sophisticated as this one, you’re bound to have questions. Blog comments are a terrible place to handle support issues although we welcome general comments about our articles and software. If you have particular support issues, we encourage you to get actively involved in the PBX in a Flash Forums. It’s the best Asterisk tech support site in the business, and it’s all free! Please have a look and post your support questions there. Unlike some forums, ours is extremely friendly and is supported by literally hundreds of Asterisk and 3CX gurus and thousands of users just like you. You won’t have to wait long for an answer to your question.

Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors

Freepbx Voice Prompts

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