Directing tone, pace and mood for narration, music and sound effects.
Audio prompting trades visual vocabulary for a different set of levers: tone, pace and mood. Getting these right matters just as much as getting lighting right in an image - a mistimed or wrongly-toned voice line can undercut an otherwise perfect visual.
Directing narration and character voice
For voiceover and character voice, name the tone directly - warm and reassuring, brisk and confident, playful - and write the script the way people actually talk. Short sentences, one idea at a time, natural rhythm. Reading a script out loud before generating is the fastest way to catch anything stiff.
Directing music and sound effects
Music responds well to mood-first language - calm, energetic, tense, playful - paired with a tempo or genre cue if you have one in mind. Sound effects work best named precisely and tied to a moment: not "some sound" but "a soft click" or "a low whoosh as the camera passes."
- 1Name the tone you want before writing a single word of script.
- 2Write narration in short, natural sentences.
- 3Describe music by mood and tempo, not just genre.
- 4Tie sound effects to a specific moment in the clip.
Keep background music quieter than narration in your head as you write the brief too - if the mood you are asking for would naturally be loud and busy, say so explicitly or the voice will get buried later.
Whatever medium you are prompting, no result is ever final on the first try. The next lesson covers how to refine efficiently instead of starting over every time.