How ProWritingAid Can Save You Money When Self-Editing Your Book

I recently discovered that ProWritingAid can save you money when editing your book.

As a hybrid writer, I was thrilled with this discovery. In the past, I’ve paid for a human to complete both the copy edit and a final proofread. (Usually two different people.) That’s a significant investment, but one that was worth it to me, as I wanted the final product to be as error free as possible.

But this last time, after the copy edit was done, I was having a hard time finding a quality proofreader. I’d heard about ProWritingAid and had even tried the free version, but had gotten frustrated because of the word limit.

Right before the holidays, ProWritingAid offered a fifty-percent discount on the premium subscription price. My book was ready to go save the final proofread, and my struggles in finding a qualified proofreader were delaying my timeline, so I jumped at the chance and bought it.

In case you haven’t tried this program yet, I’ve got a few reasons why you may want to below. By the way, I’ve used Grammarly in the past for article editing, but I wouldn’t have trusted it with book proofing. ProWritingAid is a different story. Here’s why.

ProWritingAid Can Save You Money On Certain Types of Editing

As a review, remember that book editing comes in three basic forms.

1. Developmental Editing: The main purpose of this edit is to make sure all the elements of your story are hanging together as they should. A developmental editor will address plot, characterization, setting, pacing, and flow, show you where the problems are, and help you construct a structurally sound story.
2. Copy Editing: Some people separate line editing and copyediting. I tend to lump them together, as that’s usually how my editors have worked. A good line edit will point out confusing passages and transitions, show where the writing can be tighter, suggest improved phrasing, and the like. A copy edit looks at grammar, punctuation, and spelling, as well as inconsistencies in descriptions and style.
3. Proofreading: At this stage, the book is ready to be published. The purpose of the proofread is to detect any final errors. These may include typos, spelling and grammar issues, punctuation problems, and other mistakes.

I would still highly recommend using a professional editor for both developmental editing (if you need it) and copy/line editing. A computer program just can’t replace a good human editor at these stages. But once the story is in good shape, bring on the artificial intelligence!

ProWritingAid May Be Superior to a Human Proofreader

When it comes to the proofreading step, I feel that ProWritingAid does a better job than a human can.

It’s easy for a human being to miss typos, spacing issues, grammar problems, and more, particularly when they’re reviewing a long work. A good proofreader will catch most of them, but often not all of them. (The mistakes we all find in most published books prove this to be true.)

ProWritingAid, on the other hand, doesn’t get tired. It will scan your manuscript and consistently find the mistakes. Plus, you can run your manuscript through as many times as you like without incorporating increased costs.

Does that mean your final book is guaranteed to have no mistakes? Something may be missed, but the odds are a lot higher that your manuscript will emerge just as well polished or more so than it would using a human proofreader. And the cost is a lot less.

ProWritingAid Can Save You Money: 5 Checks I Love

There are many types of editing checks through which you can put your manuscript on ProWritingAid—so many that you have to be careful not to become overwhelmed or inadvertently distort your manuscript.

The goal is to check for those things that can lower the quality of your writing while keeping your unique writing style intact. The five checks that I found most helpful when going through my novel were the following.

1. Basic Grammar Check.

Above you can see a screenshot of the menu on the program. Most of the options are visible, though there are additional ones under “More Reports.”

After I’ve uploaded my document, the first one I go to is the basic “grammar check.” This function looks for spelling errors and grammatical errors. At the very least, you want your story to be free of those, so this is a good place to start.

2. Overused Words

This checks for words you may have overused in your document. This was useful to me for a couple of reasons.

First, it helped me to spot and reduce the overused words the program found in my story. You don’t have to change them all, of course, but usually, you can find another word that better suits the sentence, anyway. As you cut down on the usage of your overused words, your prose becomes stronger.

Second, this made me aware of some of the words that I consistently overuse in my fiction writing. That’s information that will stay with me on subsequent drafts, which is nice because, ultimately, it should help me become a better writer. We all have these “crutch” words we rely on, and knowing yours can open your eyes to some of the weaknesses in your prose.

3. All Repeats

I found this one semi-useful in editing my draft, but useful enough that it’s worth adding to the list. It finds the repeated phrases you have in your story, breaking them down by how many words are in the phrase. So you may have frequent 7-word phrases, frequent 3-word phrases, etc.

It takes time to check all of these, but it’s worth doing. Sometimes you’ll see that you repeated a phrase when you didn’t mean to, or repeated the phrase in close proximity. It’s easy to read over these when self-editing your work, but when the program points them out, you can see how they take the shine off your writing.

After going through several chapters, I found myself reviewing all the repeats that were four words or more. The ones that are three words, two words, or one word usually consist of common words that can’t help but be repeated—particularly if you’re checking a novel-length manuscript all at once. (I also did a chapter-by-chapter check first.)

It’s still helpful to know what those three-, two-, and one-word repeated phrases are. Then you have the option to change them if you think they could be improved.

Note: You can have the program suggest alternative phrases. Sometimes this is helpful. Other times, you’ll need to come up with your own. But the suggested phrase function can inspire other ideas.

4. Word Echoes

This was probably my favorite check. It looks for word “echoes,” which means repeated words or phrases that occur close together—within a paragraph or two.

I usually read my writing aloud to catch these—and that works well—but I was surprised that I still had more than I thought I would have in my final manuscript. I appreciated the ability of the program to point them out so I could fix them where needed.

Of course, word echoes aren’t always bad or incorrect. You may have purposely put them in dialogue or used them to emphasize something. It’s just nice to know where they are so you can choose whether to change them or not.

5. Style

This was the least helpful of the five checks I used in my novel, but I still found it valuable enough to include.

When you hit this button, the program will check several things about the style of your writing. Perhaps the most useful is its ability to find passive verbs. Again, you may have put these in on purpose, but it’s good to check them just in case.

The other things it tests for—readability enhancements, business jargon, inclusive language improvement, and more—were less useful to me, but I can see where they may be helpful for someone writing a nonfiction article, blog post, or other piece.

ProWritingAid Can Save You Money in Other Ways

You can do a lot more with ProWritingAid than these five checks I’ve described. There is a “combo” button, for instance, that will check for a combination of issues (you can choose which ones). The result sort of looks like an editor went crazy and redmarked every line, however, so I soon abandoned that one. You may find it useful, though.

You can also check your story structure, look for clichés, see how your pacing is, and that sort of thing. I haven’t experimented much with these yet as I prefer to get feedback from my beta readers and human editors on these facets of the story.

As to whether I’ll renew my subscription next year (at full price), that remains to be seen. I find the program most useful for my books, but I’m not a fast writer. If I don’t have a book coming out by the time the renewal fee is due, I may suspend the subscription for a time.

But then again, as fast as technology is changing, there may be something better out there by then! For now, I’m very happy with what this program allowed me to do with my next book.

_{Featured image courtesy of Tima Miroshnichenko via Pexels.}