Editing with AI tool ProWritingAid
Welcome to the November issue of Hacker Chronicles!
This month's features:
- How to get a signed copy of my upcoming novel Submerged
- My recent chat with New York Times bestselling author Daniel Suarez
- Editing with AI tool ProWritingAid
Next issue will feature a review of the Netflix movie Anon. Go ahead and watch it so you're ready for my deep dive. Here's Wikipedia's description of the premise:
"In the near future, humanity lives in a technologically advanced, dystopian society. The government requires that everyone receive an ocular implant that records everything they see. The implant provides an augmented-reality head-up display to the user with information about anyone and anything they may see, as well as recording the user's view. Investigations into crimes amount to detectives reviewing video and assessing whether an alleged perpetrator is innocent or guilty."
/John
Writing Update
Sign Up for a Signed Copy of Submerged!
For Identified, I offered a limited, numbered, and signed copy called the Binary Release. Yes, it was numbered in binary, and it was a lot of fun!
I'll do it again for Submerged, but with fewer copies. The price will be $50 + shipping, so probably around $60 in the US and a bit more for international.
I will cap the number of copies to 64 instead of 256 this time so email me now if you want one. You will get the number matching the order in which I get the emails.
As always, I appreciate your support for my writing!
Editing Submerged
The next time you'll hear from me, Submerged should be with the copy editor. I've been racing towards the finish line during flights, at hotels, and of course at home either in my Writer's Crib or in a comfy armchair in our living room. During weekdays, I try to get up at 5am to get 2-3 hours of editing done before work.
I'm now above 95k words which is about five chapters more than was aiming for. It has grown 1,200 words since the beta read.
For my next novel, I'm setting the goal at 70k. I may even go down to 60k given how my work grows during editing. I love shorter novels myself and after Submerged the series is at a point where shorter, fast-paced pieces make sense. There's also a part of me that feels like I've proven that I can write full-length novels.
A Chat With Author Daniel Suarez
Back in June 2019, I wrote an email to fellow hacker fiction novelist Daniel Suarez. I was wrapping up the first draft of what became Identified and I asked Daniel for recommendations on agents and editors. Besides thanking him for his awesome book Daemon of course.
I never heard back. Until a few weeks ago! Daniel was coming to San Francisco and wanted to meet up with a select few of his readers. I drove up and we were 15-20 people who sat in a bar chatting with Daniel and each other about fiction, hacking, cyber conflict etc. Daniel's wife was the organizer, introducing me to the rest of the group as "the author."
Daniel has won the Prometheus sci-fi award twice, most recently this year for his novel Critical Mass. And his New York Times bestselling debut novel Daemon is a modern classic in hacker fiction.
He has also given a Ted Talk on the societal and human dangers of autonomous weapon systems that kill with no human decision involved.
Needless to say, Dan and I share a lot of interests so it was great to talk about writing, where we find inspiration, what tools we use, and what worries us about the future.
Daniel is about ten chapters into reading Identified and he likes it. He told me he seldom reads in his own genre because it so easily becomes work as the editing brain kicks in.
We decided I will interview Dan in a future episode of this newsletter.
November Feature: Editing with AI Tool ProWritingAid
After I had processed all the beta reader feedback (thank you, beta readers!), it was finally time to use the controversial AI tool ProWritingAid.
I use it to edit my novel, not write it. I'm at such a late stage in writing this book that I'm not looking for major changes anyway.
The App Itself
I installed the ProWritingAid Mac app and could immediately tell that it was an Electron app. Sure enough, it uses more than 600 MB of memory.
Judging by network traffic it sends all my text to servers for processing.
You only get its suggestions if you hover over what it has underlined. I keep clicking instead, which gets me nothing. The hover function is a bit flaky too so there's constant (mild) frustration.
Editing a Scrivener Project
I use Scrivener for my writing and ProWritingAid is able to edit Scrivener projects in-place. You just quit Scrivener and open the project in ProWritingAid instead. From there, you edit text file by text file.
You can configure ProWritingAid to your style of writing. It starts out in General and I set it to Creative–>General Fiction. An annoying thing is that it resets every time you quit the app so you have to remember to configure it each time.
When you open a text file, ProWritingAid analyzes it using its AI model(s). That takes on the order of ten seconds for my short chapters, and the results come in gradually without a progress bar so you sit and wait for it to settle down.
Ten seconds isn't much but on modern computers you are used to instant processing so I find myself timing sips of coffee when I'm waiting.
For anyone writing longer chapters, the wait could be significant. Hopefully it at least scales linearly so twice as long a chapter will only take twice as long to analyze. This is a paid service so you should expect excellent performance.
Examples of What the Tool Does
I don't want to share spoilers for Submerged so I've picked examples that don't reveal much. For all of these, the text in cursive is my original.
Doesn't Understand References and Double Meaning
Then one Wednesday evening, as they listened to the classic jazz radio station offered only on Wednesdays, she heard Body and Soul by Billie Holiday and realized that she would never get any equipment or tools. This had to be done body and soul.
Here the tool said "Possible redundancy. Are you saying the same thing twice?" It was suggesting I cut the last sentence. It clearly misses the difference between Body and Soul by Billie Holiday and doing something body and soul. And it misses the literary purpose of me writing it that way.
This example was what told me that just letting such a tool loose on your manuscript can ruin it.
Improves With More Direct Language
He complied and let her in in silence.
The tool suggested "He complied and let her in silently." which is an improvement in my view.
So I'll say no more than this
Here the tool suggested "So I'll say only this" and that's better.
The man on duty gave them a glance.
I got the suggestion "The man on duty glanced at them." which I approved.
More Powerful Words Mess Up Dialog
ProWritingAid often suggests words with more impact, such as "wonderful" instead of "good." Sometimes that's really not what you want. Take this example which comes from a dialog:
we now have a pretty good picture of the malicious online activity
The tool suggested "we now have a pretty wonderful picture of the malicious online activity" which no human would say and misses the dark context.
Botched Meaning of Words
sweet and savory
The tool said "Possible redundancy. Are you saying the same thing twice?", suggesting I only write "sweet" or "savory." That's ludicrous since they are opposites. I wonder if this is the result of bad training data?
Nuances That Make You Think
Let’s talk about US critical infrastructure.
ProWritingAid wanted me to change to "the US" and it took me a while to decide to reject that. In this case, US reads like American. There's a difference between "the American infrastructure" and "American infrastructure" but it's subtle. In the first case, it's owned by the US and it's the whole infrastructure. In the latter case it's made in the US, or owned by the US, and it's an arbitrary subset of the infrastructure.
How do you view this one? As said, it gave me pause.
My Conclusions on Editing With ProWritingAid
My work improves with this tool, and I learn as I go. That way it feels like working with a human editor. But a human editor would not propose crazy stuff a significant portion of the time. I'm kind of holding the tool's hand here.
It's similar to the Hemingway app when used for checking grammar and improving single sentences. I have not tried using ProWritingAid to generate larger portions of text.
You need to know the language you're writing in well to not get lost in all the suggestions. And you need to have a voice as an author for this kind of editing to not regress you to the mean.
Going forward, I expect personalized models to be much more useful. Authors who have a corpus of writing should be able to refine a model to retain their style and voice. I'm doing all this work to hold the tool's hand and the tool is not improving at all.
All of this said, I will keep using such a tool and I expect it to be much better once I get to edit my third novel. I don't feel like using such a tool is "cheating" or makes my work less authentic.
But a non-glib question lingers with me: Would Ernest Hemingway or Agatha Christie have appreciated ProWritingAid?
Currently Reading
I'm still reading Acts of the Apostles by John F. X. Sundman. Almost all available time is going toward editing of my own writing right now.