New writing app

[HeyAll]

This isn't a spam, I don't get anything.

But there's a new writing app called wordtune.com

It works the same way as grammarly and prowritingaid, but this gives you many options for revising your writing -- specifically if you want to shorten something or lengthen a sentence. I gave it a quick look just now and the suggestions look good.

 

[Rustyoznail]

Interesting, but I'll reserve judgement until I have a longer look.

AS a test, I checked the opening sentence from a story I'm writing.

Cathy sidled up to me and sharply elbowed me in the upper arm. “So, you going to the tournament?”

And here are the top 3 rewrite suggestions.

1) Cathy elbowed me in the upper arm with a sharp elbow.
2) She elbowed me sharply in the upper arm as she walked up to me.
3) My upper arm was sharply elbowed by Cathy as she came up to me.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Interesting, but I'll reserve judgement until I have a longer look.

AS a test, I checked the opening sentence from a story I'm writing.

Cathy sidled up to me and sharply elbowed me in the upper arm. “So, you going to the tournament?”

And here are the top 3 rewrite suggestions.

1) Cathy elbowed me in the upper arm with a sharp elbow.
2) She elbowed me sharply in the upper arm as she walked up to me.
3) My upper arm was sharply elbowed by Cathy as she came up to me.

All of which discard the nuance of "sidled up to me." Perhaps it didn't know what sidled meant, or is dumbing down for readers. Number 3 is clunk central. That's terrible, Muriel.

 

[JGittes]

AS a test, I checked the opening sentence from a story I'm writing.

Cathy sidled up to me and sharply elbowed me in the upper arm. “So, you going to the tournament?”

I'm not all high-tech AI and shit, but just eliminate the 'to me' and you're set.

More seriously. I tried a few of my opening sentences and wordtune's suggestions included six possibilities that I had already edited down to the final versions. I'm not sure I need more bad choices before I start editing.

I use the paid version of Grammarly. I feel it does a good job of highlighting my more convoluted sentences and offers acceptable rewrites when it can.

 

[SimonDoom]

I tried it on a sample of my writing and it came up with some good ideas. But it's somewhat unnerving, isn't it? I feel like it's doing my work for me and if I adopt its suggestions--even if they're improvements--it's not entirely my writing.

 

[Comshaw]

Interesting, but I'll reserve judgement until I have a longer look.

AS a test, I checked the opening sentence from a story I'm writing.

Cathy sidled up to me and sharply elbowed me in the upper arm. “So, you going to the tournament?”

And here are the top 3 rewrite suggestions.

1) Cathy elbowed me in the upper arm with a sharp elbow.
2) She elbowed me sharply in the upper arm as she walked up to me.
3) My upper arm was sharply elbowed by Cathy as she came up to me.

The problem I see with this is the suggestions from the program completely eliminate your voice, your style. A writer's voice (style) comes from the choice of words used as well as the order and context they are used. While all four of the sentences are technically correct (or close enough for the girls I go with) the last three seem to be, the only word I can come up with as a description is sterile. The flavor of the sentence has been wrung out of it.

That's my two cents worth.

Comshaw

 

[lovecraft68]

I tried it on a sample of my writing and it came up with some good ideas. But it's somewhat unnerving, isn't it? I feel like it's doing my work for me and if I adopt its suggestions--even if they're improvements--it's not entirely my writing.

This is why I don't use anything than basic grammar and spellcheck, I don't want help with my word choices because they're mine. Now, whether I'm always right or not is another story, but its like someone putting words in your mouth in a conversation.

 

[MrPixel]

Yes. Even crude AI such as spelling auto-correct drives me nuts. I tried to use my wife's iPad to write a couple of chapters when we were away from my computer, and the moments spent undoing its stupidity constantly broke the mental flow. Yes, I could have turned it off, but since it was a shared device and she's barely tech-literate it wasn't my place to mess with settings she relied on.

I dislike AI in general for all the reasons cited here. Just wait until you have a car that wrenches the steering wheel out of your hand ("lane keeping assist") because you're attempting to swerve to avoid hitting something.

 

[stickygirl]

I liked the expression 'with a sharp elbow'. I dunno, I quite like words being rearranged for me - it makes me look at them in a new light. We decide if we want to accept the suggestions so we remain the author. It might even provoke a fresh thought if we've become bogged down. I often find thesaurus synonyms helpful in that way. People probably said the same about typewriters - it's just a tool like any other.

 

[Rustyoznail]

True, Sticky. This might be a useful business tool, but fiction? I'll stick to Grammarly free. JG's edit wasn't an option, but I've used it.

 

[Voboy]

I tried it on a sample of my writing and it came up with some good ideas. But it's somewhat unnerving, isn't it? I feel like it's doing my work for me and if I adopt its suggestions--even if they're improvements--it's not entirely my writing.

This.

Nope. Not for me, thanks. It's like AutoTune for creative writing.

 

[KeithD]

I'll stick with the "InMyOwnVoice" writing program.

 

[TadOverdon]

 

[SyleusSnow]

Nope. Not for me, thanks. It's like AutoTune for creative writing.

Speaking of which, Joanna Penn did a podcast episode on the AI-assisted writing tool SudoWrite and how she uses it. There's a lengthy article on The Verge about it and AI-assisted writing in general. Nothing yet is exactly AutoTune for writing, but these things are getting there. When they do, betcha they'll be abused in similar ways.

Playing around with some of these AI tools, I can see how they can be useful for brainstorming and even generating descriptions. But they've got a looong way to go to be useful for much more, at least for creative writing.

"Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity"

 

[Bubo_bubo]

View attachment 2166435

My phone auto correct is the first to suggest 'fuck' if I type f. And 'woof' when I type w (don't ask).

 

[gunhilltrain]

I don't use Google Docs or the other choices for writing - I use MS Word. Now what?

 

[gunhilltrain]

My phone auto correct is the first to suggest 'fuck' if I type f. And 'woof' when I type w (don't ask).

Is this an iPhone? Somebody should report it to Apple.

 

[ChloeTzang]

I don't use Google Docs or the other choices for writing - I use MS Word. Now what?

Yeah, I use Word and Google Docs both. I tried Grammarly but it screws around with my style of writing, so I just use spellcheck now. I tried one of the AI tools a while ago - my husband uses it for his company website, and I wrote a few blog posts for him using it, but I found the two I tried pretty clunky. I'm sure they'll improve, there's a lot of work going into AI tools, but for now, they haven't really worked that well for me - and for me, it takes all the creativity out of writing.

 

[Bubo_bubo]

I write a fair bit of dialogue and I'm sure things like grammarly would fuck with that, because, well, like, they don't catch... well, how people speak, you know, huh, know what I'm talking about?

 

[gunhilltrain]

Yeah, I use Word and Google Docs both. I tried Grammarly but it screws around with my style of writing, so I just use spellcheck now. I tried one of the AI tools a while ago - my husband uses it for his company website, and I wrote a few blog posts for him using it, but I found the two I tried pretty clunky. I'm sure they'll improve, there's a lot of work going into AI tools, but for now, they haven't really worked that well for me - and for me, it takes all the creativity out of writing.

Grammarly does "suggest" style changes, you could call them, but I usually ignore most of those. It does a decent job, I'd say, with spelling, punctuation, and other purely technical issues.

What I meant was it didn't offer an option to load a Word document, that I could see.

 

[SyleusSnow]

ProWritingAid has a creative writing mode that lets you set various preferences for dialog:



...as well as a setting for "favorite author for comparison". I have mine set to "Nora Roberts" *grin* but there's a long list from Ray Bradbury to Zadie Smith.

The dialog check looks for the usual formatting issues plus things like excessive use of non-standard dialog tags (anything other than "said") and percentage of a document that's dialog (10-80% is "normal").

It's pretty useful, without being overbearing. When it suggests a change to a sentence, it's usually to reduce wordiness. Whether it uses AI behind the scenes I dunno. It does tend to over-recommend use of commas, but all tools seem to.

 

[Bubo_bubo]

It does tend to over-recommend use of commas, but all tools seem to.

Especially after So

 

[dmallord]

Grammarly does "suggest" style changes, you could call them, but I usually ignore most of those. It does a decent job, I'd say, with spelling, punctuation, and other purely technical issues.

What I meant was it didn't offer an option to load a Word document, that I could see.

Like most folks here, I started with just my own editing. I thought it was okay, until comments about needing or 'get an editor' started showing up. I found a Lit volunteer who has been very helpful for my grammatical issues: homophones, punctuation, contractions etc. [kenjisato]. As for content I let that go.

Then I found the free Grammarly and gave that a try. It was helpful and when the enticement came for a discount subscription, I bit the hook. The paid one is much better, still not fantastic but does a good job. The problem with it, as I see in writing, is that it keeps flagging errors and distracts from the mental flow process. I guess turning it off and then on after a draft would help with that part of it.

I'm not sure what the 'option to load a Word Document' means here. When I open a Word document, Grammarly just starts running and doing its thing. If its a long document, it takes some length of time to display the count [kind of looks like it isn't operational] but eventually it shows it's little round head in the document's edge.

Grammarly gave me a good chuckle when I opened a previous submission. It found over 800 'errors' or changes. Nearly every one of them was an idiomatic or colloquial dialogue change that just killed the meaning and tone as others have noted. Dutifully, I hit enter every time and nearly wore out my 'dismiss' button.

I use it now before I send my stories to Kenji. He makes them read way better than the AI or my tries at grammar fixin'.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I write a fair bit of dialogue and I'm sure things like grammarly would fuck with that, because, well, like, they don't catch... well, how people speak, you know, huh, know what I'm talking about?

I think I mentioned that Grammarly requires some judgment calls and has to be ignored a lot for things like dialogue. A spelling error, well that's okay. I'm not sure I feel like trying out a lot of other programs right now - maybe I'll get another one at some point.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Like most folks here, I started with just my own editing. I thought it was okay, until comments about needing or 'get an editor' started showing up. I found a Lit volunteer who has been very helpful for my grammatical issues: homophones, punctuation, contractions etc. [kenjisato]. As for content I let that go.

Then I found the free Grammarly and gave that a try. It was helpful and when the enticement came for a discount subscription, I bit the hook. The paid one is much better, still not fantastic but does a good job. The problem with it, as I see in writing, is that it keeps flagging errors and distracts from the mental flow process. I guess turning it off and then on after a draft would help with that part of it.

I'm not sure what the 'option to load a Word Document' means here. When I open a Word document, Grammarly just starts running and doing its thing. If its a long document, it takes some length of time to display the count [kind of looks like it isn't operational] but eventually it shows it's little round head in the document's edge.

Grammarly gave me a good chuckle when I opened a previous submission. It found over 800 'errors' or changes. Nearly every one of them was an idiomatic or colloquial dialogue change that just killed the meaning and tone as others have noted. Dutifully, I hit enter every time and nearly wore out my 'dismiss' button.

I use it now before I send my stories to Kenji. He makes them read way better than the AI or my tries at grammar fixin'.

Thank you, but meant that the wordtune.com app mentioned in the original post doesn't offer a Word upload option, or at least I can't find it. The software varies - just like it varies on the writing sites themselves. Grammarly offers a copy-and-paste option for text, but I didn't see that on wordtune yet.

Grammarly can get confused by dialogue and idioms among other things. The one I always remember is that it won't accept, say, "The cliff was made of brown stone." It will always change it to "brownstone,' meaning a rowhouse that may or may not be clad of rock of that color.