If you have the choice of going to the ball fashionably attired, or in
your old clothes, the choice is obvious. Bear with me as I’m aware attending
balls isn’t a regular occurrence in the lives of many working writers. In this
scenario I’m comparing Pro Writing Aid, the free online editing tool to the
better outfit, and your everyday clothing to your computer’s spell checker
program. My apologies to the creators of the latter – their everyday standard
is certainly adequate, but the online editing programs take your work to
another level.
Auto Crit, Writers’ Dock, Editor Software and LitLift are several other
programs available. When I first discovered this kind of help was free, I tried
Auto Crit as well, but I found Pro Writing Aid worked best for me. And as I’m
the not broken, don’t fix it type of person, I’ve continued to use the same
program.
The following two paragraphs are from a prompt written during a writing
course I took a few years ago, and put through my computer’s grammar and spell
check.
Oaxaca bustles despite the
simmering heat. Ellie sits in a window seat of the hotel restaurant scanning
the crowd. She takes a slug of cold
cola. Momentary relief. No sign yet of Mimi or Roger. Nor of Jose, their
contact and guide who’d driven them out to the mesa. She’s waited for two days
now, unsure whether to go to the police or not. Sweat trickles down her back in
slow warm drops.
Then she spots him. Jose. Standing
right in front of the hotel. She recognizes his dirty green baseball cap. She
taps hard on the window. He looks up. His eyes widen and his face flushes. She stares at him as he turns and dashes into
the road cutting through the slow moving traffic, disappearing from sight. Now
she knows for sure something’s wrong.
Here’s the same paragraph after running it through the online editing
program.
Oaxaca
bustles despite the simmering heat. Ellie sits in a window seat of the hotel
restaurant scanning the crowd. She takes
a slug of cold cola. Momentary relief. No sign yet of Mimi or Roger. Nor of Jose,
their contact and guide who’d driven them out to the mesa. She’s waited for two
days now, unsure whether to go to the police or not. Slow warm drops of sweat
trickle down her back.
Then she spots him. Jose.
Standing near the entrance. She recognizes his dirty green baseball cap. She
taps hard on the window. He looks up, eyes widening as he recognizes her. She watches
in disbelief as he dashes into the road, cutting through the slow moving
traffic, disappearing from sight. Now she knows for sure something’s wrong.
Not a huge difference, (unlike some of the work I've put through this
editing mill) but the program did highlight errors in the following categories;
overused words, long sentences, sticky sentences, use of passives, repeated
sentence starts, grammar (which includes spelling errors), repeated phrases,
diction, and vague/abstract words.
I looked at all the points picked up (two paragraphs didn’t take long),
but left the final sentence as it was - despite the warning that now, for,
sure, something, and wrong were all glue words (words that slow down readers)
because that sentence expressed exactly what I wanted the character to think.
Yet because the editing tool had emphasized this sentence, I gave that decision
extra consideration – which is always a good thing to do.
When editing with an online program, I found a couple of areas to be
wary of, as Pro Writing Aid is, after all, a computer program. Dialogue is one
of the weak areas. The way people talk using colloquial expressions,
repetitions and clichés doesn’t make the program a happy bunny.
Misinterpretations of words do happen on occasion: the suggestion to change the
vice squad to the versus squad made me laugh.
I’m not suggesting that writers don’t use human editors, and
syntax is one area a breathing editor will be far sharper at spotting, but you
can give yourself a head start in the editing game - and editing your work
helps you detect and correct your most frequent errors.
The one thing you don’t relinquish to any editor, computer or human, is
your writing voice. My advice would be, use an online tool, they’re free and
they’re good, just make sure you don’t edit the life out of your stories.
Writing Update
I’m editing a love story – well, it’s break up story – for Wattpad, but
something keeps niggling even after running it through Pro Writing Aid (and yes,
I did leave in a couple of repeated sentence starts for emphasis), but it still
isn’t right. And it’s the plot line because I’m missing a discernible dramatic
arc. Must every story have a dramatic arc? Maybe I could consider it a
modernist story? But I like that rising tension – it’s what keeps me reading. I
don’t think I have to rewrite the story, but a changing around of events might
just work.
Chapter one of Unknown Planet is
with beta readers; Vance the Vamp (definitely
a working title) is finally asleep, and research in one particular area I need
more information about is on next week’s list. I know, me and my lists – but
they remind me there’s always more to do, so I keep the momentum going. I am
making progress, and it’s all good.
Today’s Haiku
THE SEA
breathing in and out
slow sea murmurs sweet nothings –
massages the shore
Useful Links:
If you want to try one of the following programs, check them out and see
which one best fits your needs:
http://www.prowritingaid.com
http://www.litlift.com
Karen Woodward puts a few famous writers
through Pro Writing Aid:
blog.karenwoodward.org/.../want-help-with-editing-try-free.htm...
And Google + blogger C. M Skiera gives his take on the program:
cmskiera.blogspot.com/.../online-editing-software-pro-writing-aid.html
Join me on Twitter at: teagankearney@modhaiku and I'd love it if you could check out my stories on Wattpad.
Thanks for visiting my blog, and please do leave a comment.
To all story lovers out there, good reading, and to those of you who
write, good writing.
