I rarely endorse any products, but I recently came across one called ProWritingAid that has improved the way I write.
I wrote my first NYPD novel, Perfect Pawn, in 2012. Back then, my creative writing training comprised everything I had forgotten in school and the ungodly amounts of reports I had written during my police career. Not exactly a solid foundation to become an author, but I had a story to tell and I enjoyed writing them. Eight years later I have written thirteen books that span three different fictional series’ and several non-fiction works.
Over the years I have improved as a writer, but in the beginning I got blasted frequently by reviewers. While the found the books enjoyable, they took exception to the grammatical errors in my earlier works. What can I say besides mea culpa? As I said, I’m a story-teller, not an English major, but that doesn’t mean I am ignorant when it comes to acknowledging my weaknesses. So I did the best I could, taking the criticisms to heart and trying to learn on my own.
As an aspiring author, you learn several hard truths. The first is that this game is rig against you. Those lucky enough to get a publishing contract get access to a wide variety of tools that help them deliver a polished product, including editing services. Indies can also accomplish that, but it comes out of their pocket.
Here’s a rate schedule put out by the Editorial Freelancers Association in 2008:
Basic copyediting: $25 to $40 per hour Pace: 5 to 10 pages an hour
Heavy copyediting: $35 to $50 per hour Pace: 2 to 5 pages an hour
Substantive editing: $40 to $65 per hour Pace: 1 to 6 pages per hour (also called line editing)
Developmental editing: $50 to $80 per hour Pace: 2 to 5 pages per hour
For argument’s sake, let us assume that an Indie author produces a 350 page book. Even with the most basic editing, it will probably run them around $2k. This means that they will have to sell over 1k books before they realize any profit. If you add in the cost for a cover and formatting, it will be a lot more.
I found myself in the same literary boat. While I had the ability to design my own covers, and taught myself formatting, I floundered in the area of editing. I tried to get the help of others, more knowledgeable in grammar, including an English teacher, but it wasn’t enough.
About a year ago, I came across a link for a program called ProWritingAid. Admittedly, I was skeptical at first, but since it was a onetime fee, I bit the bullet and tried it. I figured the worse it could be was a tax deduction at the end of the year. I ran my first novel, Perfect Pawn, through it and sat back. Now mind you, I had been ‘editing’ this book for nearly seven years. Every time I would get a negative review I would go back and do another review to fix the mistakes. At the point I ran it through the ProWritingAid summary program. I thought the book was pretty solid, clearly I was wrong.
What the results showed was that my overall score, after all those edits, was only a 77 out of 100. On top of that, my grammar was an 81 and my style was an abysmal 56. It felt like I got kicked in the guts.
I sat down and began reviewing each chapter, doing my best to make corrections, while not impacting the story. In the end, I improved my overall to a 93 and my grammar to a 99. I wish it were perfect, but you will never be 100 percent. After all, in one of George R. R. Martin’s professionally published / edited book there is a sentence that says they “raped the windows”……….. Ouch.
As indie authors, we must always look to improve, not just for ourselves, but for the readers experiences as well. I firmly believe that ProWritingAid can do that, so much so that I have gone back and have begun re-editing all of my books using this program. Not only is it going to help with your grammar and spelling, but it will also show you the words you use too much.
If you are an author, on a limited budget, I suggest that you give it a try. I’m sure you will find it to be a worthwhile investment.
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Best wishes, Stay Safe, & God Bless.
Andrew
