Information for Authors
If you’d like to write a short story for our website, we’d love to hear from you. Your work could be an important part of helping someone with hearing loss to develop vital lipreading skills, to communicate more easily in a hearing world.
What is Lipreading?
Lipreading is a communication technique for people with hearing loss. It’s the ability to recognise the lip shapes, gestures and facial expressions of a person while they are speaking, so as to gain a better understanding of what they are saying. Lipreading takes skill and concentration, as well as plenty of practice. Some people develop their own lipreading ability as their hearing deteriorates but many others struggle without formal tuition and practice opportunities.
Why write for ‘Stories for Lipreading’?There are lipreading classes available but people with hearing loss cannot always easily access them for a variety of reasons. Even for those attending classes, there are few opportunities to practise other than in the hurly-burly of everyday life, which can be intimidating. ‘Stories for Lipreading’ is a way for those with some lipreading experience to develop their skills through the enjoyment of a narrative.
We hope that films of your stories will give those with hearing loss the opportunity and motivation to practise lipreading at their own pace. Hearing loss is often accompanied by other health problems resulting in loss of mobility, isolation and depression, so your writing could provide a stimulus for the housebound as well as being a vital tool for those wanting to improve communication with their friends and families, or in the workplace.
Guidelines for ‘Stories for Lipreading’ authors.
Even if you’re an experienced writer, writing for lipreading has some special requirements. Lipreading is challenging at the best of times: we don’t want to make it impossible! So, below are a few guidelines as to what we will look for in a successful ‘Story for Lipreading’. Please have a look, to give your story the best chance of being selected for our website, and don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any queries.
We require:
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Clear and gripping plot or narrative (e.g. thrillers or detective fiction, adventure stories, romances – but other genres are very welcome.)
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Realistic characters and setting (so that lipreaders can relate what they are interpreting to recognisable contexts).
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No fantasy or sci-fi (‘otherworldly’ ideas and made-up vocabulary are hard for lipreaders to reconcile with known English vocabulary, which they are trying to recognise.)
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No gratuitous violence.
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Straightforward narrative technique (flashbacks and multiple narrators are hard for lipreaders to follow.)
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Accessible, everyday vocabulary.
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Wide-ranging appeal (i.e. enjoyable for men and women with a wide range of ages and interests.)
- We will consider stories of up to 700 words, but we will edit most of our stories to approximately 500 words, in order to make a single-episode film of 4-5 minutes when the story is read aloud at a clear, steady pace. We will not consider stories longer than 700 words.
Copyright
You must possess the copyright of any story that you submit to us. We are happy to receive work that has been previously published, self-published or entered for competitions, as well as unpublished work, as long as you still have the copyright to your story – and therefore the right to offer it to us for publication, both in the form of video films and Word/ PDF documents.
If you submit your work to us, but later need to withdraw it so that you can offer it for publication elsewhere, we will do our best to help you with this by removing your work from our website as soon as possible – but please be aware that there may be some delay in processing this. Due to the nature of online publication, we are unable to guarantee protection of your work from plagiarism once it has appeared on our website.
Please see our Terms and Conditions for Writers document for more details.
Your reward.
‘Stories for Lipreading’ is run by volunteers to provide a free lipreading resource for those who need it most. Therefore, unfortunately, we aren’t able to offer you a financial reward – but we very much hope that the rewards below will be enough to entice you to share your gifts and help people with hearing loss all over the world.
- Your story published online, with the potential of thousands of viewers. We hope you will also benefit from the publicity surrounding this exciting initiative, including media coverage and ‘grass-roots’ contact through national and local hearing loss organisations.
- You will be credited on the film, and, if you have a webpage, we are happy to create links to it or to include your biographical details.
- Your story will be brought to life by talented readers, especially trained in speaking for lipreaders. They have been chosen for the clarity of their lipshapes and strike a careful balance between expressiveness and a less demonstrative approach, so as not to distract the lipreader. Have a look at the films in the ‘Story Store’ to gain an idea of style and quality of reading.
- You have the chance to attract new readers, from both the hearing and the deaf worldwide community. (Your story is filmed with normal volume, and viewers practising lipreading will watch it with reduced or muted sound. However, those who simply want to enjoy your writing can just watch the story with the volume at a higher level, so your story can be followed by English-speakers all over the world, with or without hearing loss. It will be accompanied by a transcript of your text, so might also prove to be a popular resource for those wanting to learn or practise English.)
How to submit your story
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Read our Guidelines for Authors.
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Read the Terms and Conditions section.
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Complete the Submission Form
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Send your work as a Word or PDF attachment to info@storiesforlipreading.org.uk with the completed Submission Form as a separate attachment to the email.
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If you have any queries, email us on info@storiesforlipreading.org.uk