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.