# How to turn voice recordings into a book

You have the recordings. Here is the editing method, in the order that works.

## Inventory

Transcribe everything. Then list every person mentioned, every place, every story, and for each story note whether it is told to the end or stops partway. This list tells you what to go back and ask for.

## People before plot

For each central person, collect their sayings, what the teller called them, one argument, one act of love, one contradiction. If a person is thin, they need another conversation, not more adjectives.

## Find the shape

What question does this life answer? Where does the film start? Write that in one sentence and build chapters from it, not from the calendar.

## Draft from the transcript

Keep their words. Cut the ums, keep the odd phrasing. Mark hearsay. Resist improving sentences that are already theirs.

## Proof with the teller

They hear or read it first. Anything they want out, comes out. Then print.

## Or let it be done for you

This is exactly the pipeline the product runs: a record of people and stories, a gap check, a designed shape, a draft in the teller's voice, a family proof. If you have recordings already, they can be the start of it.