I began writing as a quest to see if I could do it. Could I
write something that had proper grammar, few to no errors, a good storyline, and
that was interesting enough to be published (not self-published)? The goals
were simple, but the implementation has been difficult. I am still working to
achieve “few to no errors.” A self-imposed requirement to edit novels at least
six times helped, but it wasn’t enough—a few errors were still found after
publication. So, for my current novel, Dead
Men Don’t Breathe, I required ten edit passes, my neighbor (who is a
critical reader) made one, and I also used an Artificial Intelligence (AI) program
called Grammarly. This blog focuses only on my experience using that AI
program.
1. I used Grammarly after I had made two edit passes on the
manuscript. My preliminary exposure to the AI software indicated there might be
too many suggested corrections if I didn’t do some screening first.
2. Grammary runs slow if more than ten pages are submitted
to it. I normally target chapters to be from ten to twenty pages, so most of my
novel could be evaluated with reasonable speed one chapter at a time.
3. Grammarly is subscription-based, so I ensured the company
would let me start and stop the subscription one month at a time. I believe
most books can be evaluated, a chapter at a time, by Grammarly in a thirty-day
period. Each month costs thirty dollars. I reasoned, if Grammarly can help
achieve my goal, then it is worth the money.
4. I cut and pasted one chapter at a time into Grammarly’s
online window. The program uncovered hundreds of errors and suggestions, some I
never would have guessed. It is not always correct and can make bad
assumptions, so each suggestion it makes must be considered on its own merit. It
took a full week of long days to get through all the suggestions. The Grammarly
program is not to be taken lightly; it is for serious authors only.
5. Grammarly did more than look for errors. It also tried to
teach me to write better. Many of its suggestions had to do with style, not unforgivable
grammar/spelling errors. I appreciated that. I want to be the best writer I can
be. The program also lets the user select the type of style he is going for. In
my case, I selected “story telling.”
6. I appreciated the program’s ability to evaluate words in
context. It’s more than a spelling checker. It knows the difference between “woodbox”
and “wood box” from context. I found that very useful because spelling checkers
do not catch context errors.
7. The program was sterling at suggesting removal of unnecessary
words and phrases. The most common error I made was associated with the use of “of
the.” For example, “by the shallow end of the pool” can be stated as, “by the
pool’s shallow end.” If the program could suggest ways to remove words, it did.
I did not always accept the specific wording the program suggested; however,
that it found anything at all was a flag that a sentence or paragraph needed to
be rewritten.
8. The program often made suggestions something like, “apply
this change to the next thirty instances?” After a long day, it was tempting to
say “yes.” I tried that a couple of times and did not like the result because
sometimes the meaning of my words changed. It’s far better to consider each
recommendation on its own merit.
9. Grammarly frequently recommended changes that led to other changes, so one sentence or paragraph might need to be addressed many times. In the worst case, it could even return to the original comment after a chain of comments were dealt with. In most cases, that was a warning to rewrite the sentence or paragraph rather than try to "fix" it.
10. After each chapter was evaluated by the AI program, and I
had considered each of its recommendations, I cut the modified text from the Grammarly
Internet window and pasted it back into a separate Word document. I had
established the standards I wanted for that document, such as a page size of
six inches by nine inches, and the chapters I pasted into that Word document
were correctly assimilated.
11. After the Grammarly edit pass, I began my third edit
pass on the document. I was surprised. I apparently missed some of the Grammarly
edit suggestions, and I believe I found a few additional Grammarly changes in
the document that I missed earlier. As I edited the document for eight more
passes, Grammarly was still on my mind, and I found myself changing text to
conform to suggestions the program had made during the earlier Grammarly edit
pass. In other words, the program taught me a few things. I
appreciated that.
12. After my ninth edit pass, I could find few errors, so I
passed the document to my neighbor, Steve. Steve is a voracious reader and has
a critical eye for errors. In the past, he was delighted to find one or two
errors in my published works. This time, I challenged him to find errors in the
document before I submitted it for publication. And he did. But Steve wasn’t just
looking for obvious errors. He also commented on things like “need more
description” and the “the ending was too abrupt.” The concept errors he pointed
out required I add an additional ten pages of text to the document. The document
is far better for those comments.
13. After I incorporated Steve’s comments, I read the book
again. I still found a couple of errors and a few ways to say things better.
Now, I am rereading specific chapters I believe are critical to keep a reader's interest through the book, especially the first and last chapter.
14. Grammarly also provides a free version so people can
check it out. I don’t recommend that version. The biggest problem is that the
free version changes everything to unformatted text before it offers
suggestions. Therefore, all formatting is lost—no italics, no bold, and no
special characters. Because of that, I was a little afraid to try the real
thing. But the paid version maintains all formatting.
I have not submitted Dead Men Don’t Breathe for publication.
I am somewhat afraid to. The book is my best opportunity for an
error-free submission. A single error will spoil a chance to produce a
great story with no errors.
Thanks for reading,
James L. Hatch
