Wouldn’t it be great to have an editor on demand? Someone who can immediately tell you if your revisions are an improvement?
With AutoCrit you can have the next best thing. AutoCrit is a text analysis tool that reports on various aspects of your prose including pacing, tense, cliches, sentence starters, and dreaded adverbs. For example, consider the following paragraph:
She stood back to get a breath and wipe the sweat from her forehead. With the same motion, she flung her Home Guard style hat at Rogan. This was also unexpected and Rogan instinctively swatted the hat away. That was enough of a window for Teeryn to swoop in and chop at him with a double-handed swing. If Rogan had been any less quick, his left arm probably would have gotten broken from the strength of that chop, but instead he was able to get one hand on her wrist and use the momentum of her attack to flip her to the ground. She rolled expertly and was standing again before Rogan could follow up.
– Veiled Allegiance 3rd draft
As mentioned, AutoCrit reports on pacing, and tagged this paragraph as “slow”. Writing needs fast and slow sections, so being a slow paragraph isn’t necessarily a bad thing. This one however is in the middle of a pivotal fight scene! The reader needs to feel the intensity, so I made some changes to remove the passive voicing.
She stood back to get a breath and wipe the sweat from her forehead. With the same motion, she flung her Home Guard style hat at Rogan who reacted by swatting the hat away. That brief window allowed Teeryn to swoop in and chop at him with a double-handed swing. Rogan had no time to think. He grabbed her wrist and used the momentum of her attack to flip her to the ground. She rolled to a standing position again before Rogan could follow up.
– Veiled Allegiance 4th draft
Now AutoCrit no longer flags this paragraph as slow, and the urgency in the battle continues to flow.
The most basic reports are available for free on AutoCrit, but a subscription is required to get their more in depth analysis, such as pacing.