Yes, I know the technology is already there in Vista with applications such as Dragon. That’s not what I’m talking about. That’s a broad application and hardware combo meant to capture as many users as possibles using common features. I envision something more customized for screenwriting.

Imagine if the input device (keyboard) had separate hot keys for character, action, dialogue, and transitions. When the cursor is blinking in a dialogue area you can input with speech. All the rest (i.e. action, character, transition) is keyed in.

You can almost do this with Dragon and MS Word but the repetitive grammar required to format correctly gets in the way of productivity and creativity – two big no-nos. This is where Final Draft, Mariner and Movie Magic should be five years from now. Tailor these screenwriting programs specifically for speech recognition and you just might improve dialogue in some scripts because the writer would essentially PERFORM the dialogue out loud as it is being written.

Now push this app to a mobile device and watch productivity go through the roof! How? Imagine an iPhone app that helps you create dialogue for scenes. Say John and Jennifer are going back and forth in a scene. Click the appropriate character and speak their dialogue. He said, then she said… The app will transcribe everything into text and once you’re back inside a Wi-Fi it syncs up to your screenwriting app. You could essentially create great dialogue day and night AND I BET the result is better – with tighter exchanges. A writer becomes unfettered, moving away from the computer. He can pace, move to a different location, gesticulate and really get into character.

A NUI should improve speech recognition because it could utilize video as well as audio to recognize what is being spoken. Can a computer read lips? I think anything is possible if, like Joshua suggests, we re-imagine how we interact with a computer.

[This probably should have been a followup article, but oh well.]

How would you apply this NUI concept to writing?