Almost nobody asks. The reasoning is that the author will say no, or never reply, or want money, so the request is a waste of a message and a way to put yourself on someone's radar.
In practice a specific, short, honest request gets a yes surprisingly often, because you are offering something the author has no other way to get: their story read to an audience, with their name on it if they want it. The people who get refused are usually the ones who sent a bad message.
Nothing here is legal advice. It is the practical version — what to check first, what to send, and what to do with the answer.
Check two things before you write anything
Start with the subreddit's own rules, because some communities have already settled this. Fiction subs in particular tend to require author permission before any narration, and several have dedicated spaces for arranging it. r/YTNarratorsGuild exists specifically to help narrators understand copyright and contact authors properly, and it came out of years of channels taking stories without asking. Where a sub has a stated process, using it is easier and much better received than a cold DM.
Then check whether the author has already answered you. Regular contributors to narration-heavy subs often state their terms up front: permission granted with credit, permission for non-monetized channels only, ask first, or a flat no. It shows up in the post itself, in a stickied comment, or on their profile. Finding that line saves you the message and tells you exactly where you stand.
Send it as a comment reply, not a DM, when you can
Reddit DMs from strangers get ignored and get treated as spam, especially if you send several. A reply on the post itself is visible, obviously tied to the story, and lets the author check your account without leaving the thread. If the post is old or locked, then DM.
The message
Short, specific, and answering the questions they are going to have anyway:
Hi — I make short narrated story videos on YouTube (channel name and link). I'd like to use this post as the script for a 40-second video: text-to-speech narration, captions, no images of anyone real.
Happy to credit you however you prefer — username, "anonymous", or no credit at all if you'd rather not be named. The channel is monetized. If you'd rather I didn't, that's completely fine, and if you say yes and change your mind later, message me and I'll take it down.
Either way, thanks for writing it.
That is the whole thing, and every clause in it is doing work.
The channel link matters because they will look. A blank or brand-new channel is not disqualifying; hiding it is. Describing the video concretely — length, synthetic narration, what appears on screen — matters for the same reason, since vagueness reads as someone planning something they would rather not spell out.
Offering credit as their choice, including no credit at all, is the clause people get wrong most often. Plenty of authors posted from a throwaway precisely so nobody connects the story to them, and an unasked-for offer of credit reads as a threat rather than a courtesy. Letting them pick "anonymous" turns that around.
Stating monetization before they ask is the single best predictor of whether a yes stays a yes. It costs you a few permissions and prevents every version of the angry follow-up six months later. The takedown promise at the end costs nothing at all, makes the yes easy to give, and honoring it is far cheaper than a strike.
The four things that sink it
Copy-pasting at volume. Ten identical messages in an hour get reported as spam, and the pattern is obvious to moderators. Ask about the posts you actually want.
Asking after publishing. "Hey, I already made a video of your story, hope that's okay" is not a request, it is a notification, and it is how a polite exchange turns into a takedown.
Pitching it as promotion for them. Authors on story subs are not looking for exposure, and the framing makes it sound like you are doing them a favor by using their work.
Going quiet about money. If they find the video later on a monetized channel after you skipped that detail, the obvious conclusion is that you hid it, and they will be right.
Silence is not a yes
No reply means no permission. It is genuinely ambiguous — most people do not check Reddit inbox — but ambiguity is not consent, and a video published on the strength of an unanswered message is in exactly the same position as one published without asking.
Give it a few days, then move on to a different story. The cost of skipping one post is one post.
Keep the reply
Screenshot it, save the permalink, note the date, and keep it somewhere you can find it in a year. If a claim ever lands, the difference between "I have written permission from this account, dated, with the terms in it" and "I remember they said yes" is the entire difference.
If they set conditions — credit in the description, no monetization, one video only — write those down with the screenshot. Permission with terms attached stops being permission the moment you drift outside them.
How Memecut does this
Memecut cannot help you with permission; nothing can. What it changes is the cost of the alternative, which is where most of the pressure to skip asking comes from.
The input is a script, not a Reddit URL. Writing an original in the same voice — first-person setup, one turn, a payoff — takes a few minutes and produces a video with the same rhythm and no owner but you. Paste it in and voice, word-level captions, and a real reaction meme on each punchline get built automatically. When your own script is that cheap to produce, waiting on an unanswered DM stops being the constraint on your upload schedule.
What to remember
Check the sub's rules and the author's stated terms before writing. Reply on the post rather than DMing, keep the message short, and name the channel, the format, the credit options including none, and the monetization status. Do not batch it, do not ask after the fact, and do not treat silence as a yes. Save the answer. And if the asking is what is slowing you down, write the script yourself — the format carries fine without anyone else's post underneath it.
For the underlying question of what the risk actually is when you do not ask, see whether you can legally narrate Reddit posts at all.