For Instructional Designers ·
What you'll accomplish
By the end of this guide, you'll have ElevenLabs set up to generate studio-quality narration audio from your finalized scripts — saving you from booking voice actors, managing recording sessions, or suffering through your own recorded voice. When you need to update a line of narration because content changed, you'll regenerate that audio in 30 seconds instead of scheduling a re-record.
What you'll need
Go to elevenlabs.io → click Get started free → sign up with your email or Google account → confirm your email.
What you should see: Your ElevenLabs dashboard — a clean interface with a large text box in the center. Troubleshooting: If you don't get a confirmation email within 2 minutes, check your spam folder.
On the left sidebar, click Voice Library → browse available voices → click the play button (▶) next to any voice to preview a sample.
What you should see: Dozens of voices organized by category (narrator, conversational, authoritative, warm, etc.). Each has a short sample clip.
For eLearning, look for:
When you find a voice you like → click Add to My Voices → it appears in your personal voice library for all future projects.
What you should see: The voice now appears under My Voices in your left sidebar.
Back on the main Text to Speech page, you'll see a large text input area. Before pasting:
What you should see: Clean narration text ready to paste.
Select your chosen voice from the Voice dropdown → paste your script into the text box → click Generate.
What you should see: A waveform audio player appears below the text box. The generation takes 5–30 seconds depending on script length. Troubleshooting: If the audio sounds robotic or mispronounces a word, you can edit pronunciation using Settings → Pronunciation Dictionary to tell ElevenLabs how to say specific terms (e.g., HIPAA = "HIP-ah", SCORM = "skorm").
Click play (▶) to listen to the generated audio → if the pacing or emphasis is off, you can:
What you should see: The sliders update in real time without needing to regenerate.
When you're satisfied → click Download (arrow icon next to the audio player) → choose MP3 format → save with a clear filename (e.g., "Module2_Slide3_Narration.mp3").
What you should see: An MP3 file downloaded to your computer.
Open Storyline → navigate to the slide where you want narration → click Insert → Audio → Audio from File → select your MP3 → position the audio to start at the slide's beginning.
What you should see: An audio waveform appears at the bottom of your Storyline slide timeline.
ElevenLabs doesn't use text prompts — the "prompt" is your narration script. Here are formatting templates for different content types:
For procedural content (step-by-step):
Step one. [Sentence about step one.]
Step two. [Sentence about step two.]
[Keep each step on its own paragraph for natural pacing.]
For scenario-based content:
[Scene-setting sentence.] [Character action.] [Learner prompt.]
[Keep dramatic pauses as a period followed by a new sentence.]
For regulatory/compliance content:
[Plain language summary of requirement.] Here's what this means for you in your daily work: [practical example.]
[Short sentences read more naturally and emphasize compliance requirements.]