Through the
Sisters-in-Crime self-published authors' Yahoo! Group, I learned about an
editing tool, Prowritingaid.com. I am cautious by nature and definitely do not
have money to waste, so I checked this site out several times before I decided
it might be the right editing tool for me.
The site provides layers
of editing. There is no download of software, which I like. Instead, you upload
your project onto their site. From there you can run a summary report which
tells you things like overused words, how many long sentences, readability
level, spelling issues, grammar issues, number of “sticky” sentences, number of
same sentence starts, clichés, pacing, and more. When it reports overused
words, or adverbs, it tells you the words and by how many you should reduce.
The software prefers
smaller amounts of text, as opposed to an entire 81,000 word book, so I
uploaded one chapter at a time, ran a summary report, and with split screen,
adjusted my manuscript on the spot. I then put the chapters through the various
diagnostics, i.e. grammar, style and sticky. I didn’t need to do readability or
pacing, as I was in their “green” zone for those. And just to make you feel
good, on the areas where they find issues, they’ll tell you how much better you
are than the rest of the users! Like, you are 67%
better than …
The website allows you to
do a free test on a 500 word document. I tried it out on the first couple of
chapters of my book, and was amazed at the helpful hints the site provided. I
decided to purchase a license from them and for $40 I have use of this site for
a year.
I highly recommend this
site for all writers - for those who write for newspapers, newsletters,
periodicals, magazines, as well as full-length books. I had no idea how many times I
used the word “knew.” He knew, she knew, they knew. Prowritingaid.com picked-up
on this usage for almost every chapter. I then went through with the Find
feature in Word and found those little buggers!
No comments:
Post a Comment