We invite you to become a contributing author to our voice-interactive audio story experience. Here’s what we have to offer:
Our Expresso writing editor, specifically designed to help you craft engaging conversational stories.
The Expresso Machine private voice app on Amazon Alexa: a way for you to try out your draft stories prior to submitting them for publication.
A full-featured interactive voice app on Amazon Alexa, where a cast of virtual characters perform your story. (coming soon!)
Opportunities to earn money when listeners enjoy the first part of your story and agree to pay in order to experience the rest. (coming soon!)
We also offer writing tutorials and sample content to get you started. You’re encouraged to sign up for our private Facebook Group for authors to become part of our growing creative community.
Writing for Chatables Means Writing for our Virtual Characters
When you write for Chatables, you are writing stories for our four virtual characters to perform in an interactive audio experience. Maddison, Alex, Lilly and Collin are owner-operators of Storyteller Cafe, located in the fictional town of Rustic Falls, USA.
Maddison and her friends aren’t real people; but as imaginary characters, they each have a personal history and a present set of goals and desires. We encourage you to download and read the backstory, available on our For Listeners page.
Patrons of Storyteller Cafe (the voice app experience) get to talk with one of the four cafe personalities each day. Over time, patrons are drawn into the personal lives and the sticky situations each character faces.
But there’s a twist. Not only do Maddison, Alex, Lilly and Collin share daily tidbits from their private lives; they also love to perform stories for their patrons in the cafe's drawing room. Think of them as hobby actors. The stories they perform can be written by you!
As a creative writer, your challenge is to write original interactive stories that one or more of the four cafe owners can perform for patrons. Maddison and her friends especially enjoy performing stories in which the listener plays an active role. These are not “choose your ending” or “pick your path” stories. Instead, the stories use interactive audio in a fun new "conversational" way to draw in the listener.
You can find out more about this new storytelling technique by downloading and reading our writing guide, available on our For Authors page, by listening to the other stories written by other authors, and by watching our Expresso tutorials on Youtube.
We encourage you to keep the following in mind:
Patrons visit Storyteller Cafe to immerse themselves in a highly enjoyable conversational story experience…. and of course to learn from other authors and become better interactive storytellers themselves!
Your Creative Constraints
Since you are tasked with writing stories that our four cafe personalities can perform, you are faced with a few interesting constraints:
Maddison and her friends each have a distinct voice and they can not change how they sound. For example, Maddison speaks "standard" US English with a neutral accent, while Lilly sounds like she hails from somewhere in the UK.
You only have these four adult characters / actors to work with, so your stories need to be designed for one or more of these voices.
Don't write stories requiring more than four characters (excluding the listener), because it will be too confusing to have the same voice used for two different characters!
Think of each story as a fresh start, where you can have the four cafe characters assume completely new roles.
Consider these constraints as guardrails to help keep you safely on track and moving forward in the right direction.
Our Intended Audience and Important Content Guidelines
Our interactive audio experiences are designed for grown ups, but always meant to be family safe.
What do we mean by family safe?
The stories we publish can be filled with intrigue, romance, complex situations, humor, and more. But we don’t publish content that contains profanity, graphic violence or romantic encounters that go beyond a “PG” rating. A parent or older sibling should feel comfortable engaging with your story via the family’s smart speaker, without having to worry that children nearby could be exposed to objectionable content.
We do not currently publish stories written for or targeting children ages 13 and under.
We Look Forward to Your Stories!
We think you'll enjoy expanding your writing horizons by crafting voice-interactive stories for our cafe characters. We can't wait to see what you come up with and we're happy to help if you have any questions.
Let the adventure begin!