From Roga

[zvi]

Roga would like to talk about re-editing and re-writing works for podficcing.

Would readers be interested in editing works for podficcing, whether for content (e.g. sex scenes), length, adding dialogue tags, etc.? Does "permission to record" cover a blanket "permission to adapt"?

How would authors feel about re-writing stories so they are easier to be read or to be understood orally? For instance, if your alien language just isn't pronounceable by human beings, or if you've written something in an experimental, visual structure.

And, Roga didn't ask this, but I would like to know, how would we, as listeners, react to getting a story that was changed from the text? How extensive would the changes have to be for you to want a heads up before you downloaded? Would you want the changes indicated in the metadata or also during the story reading?

Comments

[brimtoast]

This is a very interesting topic. Yay, roga!

When I read I stray from the text a very slight amount sometimes, along the lines of turning two words into a contraction in dialogue, if that sounds more natural. Or correcting something if it a clear typo.

Anything beyond that, and I won't make a change without explicit author permission. The piece I am working on right now has the word "tortuous" in a place that I was pretty sure the author meant "torturous." I recorded tortuous because that's what the text said, but I felt uneasy about it. Then I realized the author is a friend of mine, and I could just ask her to clarify. She said that yeah, she *had* meant torturous, and then I was comfortable going in and fixing it. But I wouldn't have fixed it if I couldn't ask first, I don't think. I would err on the side of sticking to the text.

If a person were uncomfortable with reading a scene and wanted to go to the author to request a revised version for reading aloud, that would seem reasonable to me, I guess. Although if it's because of content or length, I'd kind of feel like the reader should just choose a different story. The adding dialogue tags thing is a more understandable reason to ask for rewrites, although I would be more impressed with the reader if they just took it as a challenge to really work at making the different speakers in the scene distinguishable.

So I guess my overall verdict is that asking for rewrites is reasonable as a course of action, but it seems even better to choose a story in the first place that you don't need rewrites for, and to take the parts that you're unsure of as challenges, rather than trying to get them changed.

[roga]

Hi! :) I posted a comment below explaining why I brought up sex scenes, so I won't repeat it here, but. Your words are wise, and I agree that for anything other than minimal typos, one should get author permission, just to be on the safe side. As long as the author is credited with writing the fic, it should be their words that are being read.

I don't think adaptation for reading is a bad thing; I think it can create opportunities for more fics of different kinds to be podficced, and yes, it requires more effort, but it might yield great results. And maybe if there were a culture of making these small kinds of adaptations, it would just feel more acceptable to ask an author for permission to do that.