Writing software: One year with ProWritingAid

I want to update you on ProWritingAid, a writing tool I have been using. Last month I wrote about Scrivener from Literature and Latte and suggested that you get it if you are working on a long project like a novel. If you’re already using Scrivener, let me recommend that you follow it up with ProWritingAid. Although I have not done an exhaustive search, it is the best algorithmic editor I have found. Its ability to work with files in Scrivener format makes it much more useful than other tools such as Grammarly or AutoCrit.

Within days of first trying ProWritingAid a year ago, it impressed me enough that I bought a lifetime license.  Even starting out with that positive expectation, after using ProWritingAid and growing more familiar with its many functions, I rely on it more than I thought I would. I still use the Style, Grammar, and Overused Words reports more than the other tools. I also check Repeats and Echos looking for phrases I use more than once, which I often find, and Sentence Length, since I often write long ones.

Last year I said that many of the “errors” ProWritingAid flags will not be actual mistakes, and that hasn’t changed. Scrutinizing what it flags is wise, but it’s just an algorithm, not a program that understands what you’re saying. Sifting through the mistakes, your own versus ProWritingAid’s, can be a pain, but it’s also instructive. After using the program for these months, I trust it more than I did a year ago.

I don’t use it as I’m composing because it takes too much time to go through all its reports. I cannot imagine composing in ProWritingAid. It would be a constant distraction. I end up using it instead as I polish a manuscript before submitting it to an editor (human). Most of my writing has not gotten to that point, so I will use it even more heavily this year.

Please don’t assume that ProWritingAid or any other algorithmic editor will make your writing good. It will improve your work, but better than bad can still be far from good. There is no algorithm that can measure words’ ability to move you, and that’s what we are striving for. But ProWritingAid will help keep mistakes and clumsy wording from getting in the way. It will focus you on finding better ways to say things, and anyone can use such a push.

Editing: Neyuki

In my blog post a month ago, I mentioned that I have been editing Neyuki, getting it ready to go to my editor in March.  My goal was to cut it by 20 percent from 145,000 words.  I think I am as close as I will come to that goal at 120,300 words (17 percent cut).

I am both pleased and disturbed by how little of Neyuki’s content I sacrificed in whittling down the word count so significantly.  I hope it suggests my wife and I may be imaginative, expressive editors, but it also implies my original writing was wordy and repetitive.  I am learning, though, and hope future writing will be both more efficient and more moving.

As with all but the broadest editing of Under Shōko’s Bed, I found it easier to work off of a printed version of the novel.  It allows more deliberate, thoughtful changes to the text.  One place I departed from that is in using ProWritingAid, a digital editor.  Those changes, however, were smaller adjustments in wording.  I plan to read through the novel (yet again) to make sure those edits do not affect the flow of the text, since most of the ProWritingAid alterations occurred without an extensive review of the surrounding text.

The edit has been time consuming as both my wife and I worked through the entire text twice (some sections much more) to save 25,000 words.  We’ve been bereft of free time for the last two months.  With this edit nearing completion, I am considering what comes next.  First is another pass through Under Shōko’s Bed, since I am getting feedback from a second editor, Sadie Rittman (the daughter of the editor who worked on it last summer).  I also suspect a window of opportunity will close soon for my fourth novel as a subject-matter expert will leave Japan this summer and easy access to his wealth of knowledge will disappear.  The more daunting question with that novel is what bigger, deeper meaning I will offer to readers than the arcs of the various relationships, both loving and unfaithful.

It will be a momentous winter and spring!  I hope I will be efficient too, since I have my third and fifth novels to whip into shape, and I still hope to create new content at the same time I am editing the old.

Writing software: ProWritingAid

A couple of weeks ago I savaged AutoCrit.  I was probably too harsh.  It is a useful tool, despite the limitations I found.  I still believe, though, that $30/month is too hefty a price for how much good it would do me.  What if you could have the usefulness of an algorithmic editing tool, plus Scrivener compatibility, for $60/year (or less with a coupon code)?  That sounds better to me, and that’s what I found in ProWritingAid.  I have been using it for the last week, and it’s been worthwhile.  This morning I bought a lifetime membership, which costs the same as three-and-a-half years at the yearly rate.  I may not use it that long if artificial intelligence takes major leaps forward and ProWritingAid ends up lagging behind other tools, but it has impressed me enough that I am willing to take a chance.

ProWritingAid has over twenty different reports.  I am finding the most useful to be spelling and grammar (it has caught a handful of errors that I hadn’t noticed on multiple read-throughs) checks of overused words, sentence structure and length, and style suggestions such as cutting adverbs and hidden verbs.  One of my biggest challenges is to make my writing more concise.  The myriad things ProWritingAid can flag help me reassess my writing and look for shorter, better ways to say the same thing.  It doesn’t fix my writing; it spurs me to do it.

One report that I am a bit suspicious of is the “Sticky Sentences” report.  It claims that writing that is too full of the 200 most common words is like glue; it slows the reader.  I have, however, tried this out to flag sentences, and have actually found it to be helpful as it pushes me to use more active, meaningful, or precise vocabulary.

Of course, ProWritingAid is still an algorithmic tool, and as such, it is woefully dumb.  Almost all of the grammar issues it highlights are not errors at all.  In that sense, my disappointment in AutoCrit applies equally to ProWritingAid.  It takes patience to sift through all of the non-mistakes in search of the few actual errors in the text.  At least ProWritingAid is not charging me much for all the trouble.  

In the end, ProWritingAid has one more significant advantage: it can open and save files in Scrivener format.  That convenience makes all the difference.

I would never trust the scores that ProWritingAid gives as actual measures of the quality of my writing.  Writing is art, and computers will never understand how words can move you.  Human editors are a must.  An algorithmic editing tool, however, can help you improve your writing before you send it to a real editor.