AI For First Pass Line Editing
Choice & Trust
First, full disclosure…I use all three programs, Grammarly, AutoCrit, and ProWritingAid, and I love them all. Don't make me pick one over the other. They are like my children, and I can't, so don't make me. I'm not getting a kickback from any of them, either. If enough people sign up for this newsletter, I may someday.
Grammarly: Communication, Assistance, Built for You
It’s easy to use and no long period of figuring out how to use it.
Grades your performance whether you’re writing for business or pleasure.
It helps you strike the right tone and this can be hard some times. If you’ve ever sent an email and had someone get mad at you (I certainly have,) you can get help with this here.
It has a plagiarism checker, if you want one of those.
It also has Generative AI to rewrite portions of your piece if you request help.
It provides an overall score where you can see your performance broken down into categories, readability, word and sentence length.
Conclusion: Although a great program for basic grammar, punctuation and spelling, I’m not sure it does enough to help me with shaping my story before turning it over to an editor. It’s new Generative AI rewrite is interesting, but again, I don’t think I’ll get much use out of this, but perhaps you will.
AutoCrit: “Built to Make You a Brilliant Writer.”
I’ve used this and ProwritingAid for a couple of years and I’m not sure it has helped me become brilliant yet. That may require a brain transplant, but it has increased my awareness of things I’m doing wrong in my writing. A step in the right direction, I suppose. AutoCrit has not cured me of my over-use of cliches. According to AutoCrit I overuse them : )
This is what AutoCrit does extremely well:
Analyzes your existing story. When I say analyze it, I am not exaggerating this. This program puts your story under a microscope. In the beginning this might be more information than you care to have or want. It compares a chapter of your book or your entire novel to the writing of another best-selling romance author (or other genre or author you select.) It provides the overall score or individual scores on pacing and momentum, dialogue, strong writing, word choice, repetition and readability. If any of these scores are below a certain mark as compared with the best-selling person in your genre, they suggest you go back and adjust your text and they tell you what words that need to be adjusted. To be honest when I first began using the program my scores were not what they are now. They were in the 70% range and I was devastated. I almost didn’t want to bring my writing into the dang thing. Thankfully, within the year, I improved and a couple of years later it was like the SAT’s, my scores increased. They’ve either lowered their standards or I’ve improved dramatically. Ha!
I love comparing my work to other author’s writing. It’s especially helpful if you are trying to write a suspense, romance or emulate a particular author’s style.
This software gets into the nitty gritty of style, like nothing I’ve ever seen. This is just an example. Under the Strong writing category, for instance. It compared my use of adverbs in my text to Danielle Sreele. Hysterical. I used 14 adverbs, Danielle used 24, suggesting that using too many adverbs is not good. In showing versus telling, I’m at a 28. Danielle used 40. It went down the list and I was ahead of her in most categories until the use of cliches. I had a 4, the best-selling author, Danielle was at 2. They recommended I eliminate two, and Auto-Crit pointed them out. I also had 2 redundancies and the bestselling author none. Again, I have to change that. Still, the total of 96.4 in strong writing was my second strongest category after dialogue. Less strong was the repetition category, the excessive use of the same words. Some words it suggested I find substitute words for: appears, car, white, most, enter, holds, trash, bed and traded.
Auto-crit now offers a new feature, something it calls, Inspiration. It offers to assist you in taking your scene in three different directions. I did not find this helpful. I know you as authors on your worse day in bed with a hangover could come up with better plot ideas. I provided a scene and it gave me three plot possibilities: most likely, outlandish and an unexpected twist. All three were horrible. I repeated the process with another scene, all with the same outcome. I didn’t like any of the ones suggested. They almost seemed like the same kinds of things, even though the scene was different.
It also offerers to change the mood of your scene. It asks what emotion you want to add.: surprise, happy, sad, disgust, angry, fearful and bad. When I selected one of them, it further provided me more emotions I wished to convey and then gave me hints on how to do this, giving me small slivers of text. This one seemed to work better because it encouraged me, but did not write anything for me. I can see how this would be much more useful.
Story Planner (This is also new, at least to me). I tried it and it worked well. It created a synopsis for me, something I don’t like to write, based on the information that I entered. If you are a fan of the Hero’s Quest structure, you will appreciate the way the Story Planner organizes things since it uses a similar structure. If you don’t want to invest in Plottr (which is more detailed) and want an editing program and plotting program all in one, this has potential. It also contains a world builder, a character builder and a beat sheet. I can see this being a neat thing to use right before Nano. Overall, I thought this was a more useful addition to the Auto-Crit platform. Speaking of Nano, Camp NaNoWriMo Started Tuesday and it’s not too late to start. With the Camp Nano you can set up your own word count, you own project; so if you want to edit your book or whatever, you call the shots.
Conclusion: Love the platform. Easy to use. I like the way it analyzes my story, compares it to another author, all the information it provides and its ability to polish and improve my story. The new additions of the story planner hit the mark, but Inspiration did not inspire.
ProWritingAid: “Publish without self-doubt,”
If only that were true. Why do I collect editing software packages like tarot card decks? The answer, besides my insanity, is that I have a lot of self-doubt about my writing and a lack of trust (like my granddaughters displayed above in the photo). Ha! However, I find myself constantly using both Auto-Crit and ProwritingAid for different things, occasionally for the same things, and comparing the results. Those apples don't fall far from the tree; whoops, cliche again.
The advantages and features of ProWriting Aid.
You can now run this program in your favorite apps, which is a new feature. You used to have to bring your document into their platform… no longer. If you’re a Scrivener or Word user, this is one advantage this editing program has over AutoCrit.
It identifies words it calls echoes. It identifies and replaces repeated words close together that sound anything alike to prevent echoing in the reader’s mind.
Rephrasing is another report I use in the program. I appreciate how they use AI here. The report identifies the word and then leaves it up to the author to decide whether to keep each phrase the author has written or use the one the computer writes and suggests.
Transition check. This identifies the transitions in your writing. Transitions help organize ideas. Nonfiction writing with less than 25% of sentences containing transitions is often hard to understand. My transition seems to be consistently low, which is one reason I run this report and check for it. For instance the last time I ran it for one piece of writing the usage was 10.25% and they suggested one greater than 25%.
Identifies sentences with 40% or more glue words that slow your reader down. This is my personal bug-a-boo. “They are words that carry little meaning in and of themselves, yet are still necessary to create a coherent sentence.” If you write complex sentences, divide them up. Try putting necessary information in the sentence's front end instead of the back. Stop putting too many points in a sentence. Boy, do I do this! I find I use the glue words report all the time too.
New to ProWritingAid is the Critique function. I used it to critique a scene I’d written. It gave me a full report but I’ve only provided the conclusion because the whole report was too lengthy to include: “Overall, this piece of writing showcases several strengths, including effective characterization, engaging dialogue, and palpable tension. With some improvements in setting description, cohesion, and pacing, the author can further enhance the story and captivate the reader. Keep up the good work!” Keeping in mind that every scene cannot have the same tension or the same amount of setting description, especially if the setting was explored in length earlier in the story. I think this is a pleasant addition to their platform, but I’m not sure this is something I would use all the time.
Plagiarism Checker. They charge extra for this, but you can buy a “package.” If you’re already paying for this program, it seems strange to have to pay another fee for this feature. Perhaps you can use Grammarly.
Conclusion : ProWritingAid: Still a superior program for catching writing mistakes. Superior for non-fiction writing.
My conclusion: I still can't survive with any single editing software program. This is why I need all three of these. Grammarly, AutoCrit, and ProWritingAid all offer free versions, and many offer free fourteen-day trials on their full versions at different times. Sometimes, I only have time to check for grammar and spelling, and Grammarly perfectly fits the bill. Another cliche.
AutoCrit focuses more on style, and if you need help keeping your novels exciting, it will show you where your story needs more momentum and the pacing slows. It can also compare you to other authors in your genre.
ProwritingAid can help you make fewer errors, which can improve your writing. I use ProWritingAid to edit my nonfiction writing and before I send my fiction novel to my editor. Yes, I still use a human editor.
AI is increasingly influencing and altering the content we write. Grammarly, in particular, can rewrite entire segments if the user is not careful and does not click on the "dismiss" button. This can be problematic, especially when writing dialogue in fiction. Even when working on nonfiction, maintaining my personal voice is more important than turning out a flawless piece that sounds like Grammarly authored it. Other programs, such as AutoCrit and ProWritingAid, are less likely to change words in fiction. However, they will point out things that need to be more inclusive. Unfortunately, a few of my characters fall into that category, and truthfully, to be fully formed and interesting, I don't want them to be made into robots, and for a villain to be a true villain, he or she shouldn’t be a nice person.
I thought you might also like to know that there is a AI Writing Summit coming up, Apri 8-12, if you would like to attend. It is completely free.
Please share what you use to edit your books under comments and any thoughts you might have.
Many thanks for yet another informative post. When time permits, I shall probably look into Grammarly and AutoCrit.
I know you are a whiz with that kind of thing. I on the other hand, need all the help I can get.