Elora Tips & Tricks

Working with Elora is about more than just typing words; it's about understanding how to guide the digital narration to match your unique teaching style. These tips and tricks will help you fine-tune your workflow and produce professional, studio-quality meditations every time.

Voicing a Script

Once your script is written, Elora provides powerful tools to preview your narration, refine specific lines, and ensure the final audio feels exactly right.

Use these playback options to listen to your work and make precise adjustments before sharing your meditation with the world.

Listen to Your Script

Once you have written your script, you can listen to the narration to ensure the pacing and tone are correct.

• Prepare Track. Before you can play your script, you must first prepare the audio. Tap the Prepare Track button in the header to synthesize all lines in your script.
• Play Track. Once your track is prepared, tap the Play Track button play the entire script from start to finish.
• Play from Line. To listen to a specific line, hover over a line and tap the blue Play Line icon. Elora will instantly narrate and preview it.

Revoice a Single Line

If a line has an narration glitch or a delivery you don't like, you can revoice that specific line as many times as you need until you get a delivery you like.

• How to Revoice. Hover over the line and tap the Chasing Arrows icon. This will prompt Elora to generate a fresh delivery for just that line, which often fixes minor pronunciation or pacing issues.

• Initial Narration. Note that the revoice icon only appears if the line has already been narrated. To narrate a line for the first time, just hit the blue Play Line icon.

Writing a Script

When writing a script in Elora, you're writing instructions for how she should narrate it. How you format your text directly impacts the tone, pacing, and clarity of the final audio.

Here are essential tips for writing a script that will produce the most natural-sounding narration.

Expand Abbreviations and Symbols

Elora narrates exactly what's on the screen. Ambiguous characters, symbols, or abbreviations are the most common cause of unnatural-sounding narration.

• Words vs. Symbols. Type out the full word. For example, use "inches" or "feet" instead of the " or ' marks, which Elora may misinterpret as quotation marks.
• Normalize Complex Text. If Elora mispronounces complex phrases or numbers, it helps to write them out phonetically or in plain words:
  • Breath counts: "Inhale for 4" -> "Inhale for four"
  • Time durations: "10 min reflection" -> "ten minute reflection"
  • Sequence steps: "Step 1" -> "Step one"
  • Monetary values: $5,342.29 -> "five thousand three hundred and forty two dollars and twenty nine cents"
  • Abbreviations: "w/ your breath" -> "with your breath"
• Full Titles & Words. Expand all abbreviations to ensure the correct pronunciation. For example:
  • Write "Mountain" instead of "Mt."
  • Write "Saint" or "Street" instead of "St."
  • Write "approximately" instead of "approx."

Control Pacing with Punctuation and Pauses

You can guide Elora's delivery and pacing using both standard punctuation and the line-level pause controls.

• Use Periods and Commas. Use periods to separate thoughts and create natural pauses. Use commas for shorter breaks within sentences.
• For Short Pauses (a beat). Use a dash (-) or em dash (—) to create a brief, natural pause in the middle of a sentence, as if taking a small breath or adding emphasis.
• For Hesitant Tones. Use an ellipsis (...) to create a lingering pause or beat, making the voice sound more hesitant, reflective, or as if leaving a thought unfinished.
• Use Exclamation Points. Use exclamation points (!) to make the voice more emphatic, excited, or to convey urgency.
• For Long Pauses (breathing room). For significant pauses—like creating space between paragraphs or allowing a point to sink in—do not rely on punctuation. Instead, set a dedicated pause length on the line itself. This gives you precise control (e.g., 4 seconds) and produces a much cleaner, more intentional break in the audio.

Tip: To focus on just the script content, you can hide the pauses by tapping the show/hide pauses button in the toolbar.

Use Asterisks for Emphasis

You can emphasize specific words by surrounding them with single asterisks. Surrounding a word with asterisks will make Elora stress that word, which can help clarify tone or intent in nuanced dialogue.

• Example: "Notice how your body feels *now*" will stress the word "now," while "Notice how your *body* feels now" will emphasize the word "body".
• Focus on key words: Use asterisks to highlight specific anchors, transitions, or any word your students need to hold in their awareness.

Tip: Use single asterisks only (*word*). Double asterisks (**word**) may cause Elora to read the asterisk characters aloud instead of emphasizing the word.

Audio Markups (Experimental)

Audio markups let you control how Elora speaks—not only what she says, but the emotion and non-verbal sounds behind the words.

Emotion and Delivery Style

Emotion and delivery style markups control the way a given text is spoken. These work best when used at the beginning of a line and apply to the text that follows.

• Emotion: [happy], [sad], [angry], [surprised], [fearful], [disgusted]
• Delivery Style: [laughing], [whispering]

Example: [whispering] Allow your eyes to gently close as we begin.

Non-verbal Vocalization

Non-verbal vocalization markups add in sounds where they are placed in the text. You can use multiple vocalizations within a single line to add natural effects throughout the narration.

• Non-verbal: [breathe], [clear_throat], [cough], [laugh], [sigh], [yawn]

Example: [breathe] Take a deep breath in... [sigh] and let it all go.

Best Practices for Markups

1. Choose contextually appropriate markups. Markups work best when they match the text content. If a markup conflicts with the text (e.g., using [angry] for a gentle relaxation sentence), Elora may struggle to handle the contradiction.
2. Avoid conflicting markups. Ensure multiple markups in a single text don't conflict (e.g., [surprised] combined with [yawn]).
3. Break up the text. Emotion and delivery style markups work best with a single markup per request. If you want to change emotions mid-sentence, it is best to split the text into separate lines in the Elora script editor.
4. Repeat for emphasis. If a vocalization like [breathe] or [sigh] is being omitted, try repeating it (e.g., [breathe] [breathe]) to ensure it is vocalized.

Editing a Script

Here are a few helpful tips and keyboard shortcuts to help you work more efficiently in the Elora script editor.

How to Merge or Join Two Lines

If you have two separate lines (or sentences) that you want to combine into a single line, you can do so without cutting and pasting.

• To join a line with the one ABOVE: Place your cursor at the very beginning of the line (before the first letter) and press the Backspace key.
• To join a line with the one BELOW: Place your cursor at the very end of the line (after the last word or punctuation) and press the Delete key.

Note: When you merge two lines, the new, combined line will automatically use the pause length setting from the bottom line. You may need to adjust the pause length for the merged line.

How to Delete an Empty Line

If you have an empty line in your script that you don't need, you can easily remove it.

1. Click your cursor onto the empty line (in the area where you would normally type).
2. Press the Backspace or Delete key on your keyboard. You can also use the trash can button to delete that line (hover over the line to see it).

How to Insert an Empty Line

To add a new line to your script you can either:

• Put your cursor at the end of a line and press the Enter/Return key on your keyboard.
• Tap the Insert New Line button, which looks like a left pointing arrow (hover over the line to see it).

How to Duplicate a Line

To make a copy of a line (the text and the pause) you can either:

• Copy and paste it like you would any other text.
• Tap the Duplicate Line button, which looks like a copy with an arrow (hover over the line to see it).

How to Automatically Add Pauses When Pasting

When pasting a script from an external source, you can automatically set pause lengths by including annotations directly in your text.

If your text includes a pause duration formatted like (10s pause), [pause 1m], or even just [5s], Elora will automatically detect it when pasting and set the pause duration for that line accordingly.

You can use either parentheses () or square brackets [], and the following formats are supported:

• Duration only: [10s], (5m)
• Duration with pause: (5s pause), [10m pause]
• Pause with duration: [pause 10s], (pause 1m)
• Full units: [10 seconds], (pause 2 minutes)

The supported time units are s, m, sec, min, seconds, and minutes. This saves you from having to manually adjust each line's pause setting after pasting.