WEBVTT 1 00:00:06.070 --> 00:00:14.730 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Hello, everybody! Welcome to our session. just going to give everyone a second to join us 2 00:00:16.190 --> 00:00:31.789 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: and let me move my close captioning. Actually, so I can see the screen. Amazing. Well, welcome everyone to the first session of our final day of Science Fiction writers. Week. Good to see you, Ravis? Hi, Casey, good to see you as well. And 3 00:00:31.880 --> 00:00:42.650 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: just before we get started, just to make sure everything is working all right. I'd love for you to tell me what has been your favorite part of Science Fiction writers week so far. Hi, Chris. 4 00:00:49.120 --> 00:00:51.970 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Hi, Karen, I was just in Wales this weekend 5 00:00:56.560 --> 00:01:05.119 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: we have. All the lecturers have been so knowledgeable. World anvil world anvil. Lots of world anvil fans. They're the best, aren't they? 6 00:01:05.970 --> 00:01:08.999 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Lots of world anvil fans great Portsmouth 7 00:01:09.710 --> 00:01:19.550 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: close ish to you and Benedict Benedict in Portsmouth, and help with writer's block. More world anvil love the AI lecture was interesting. 8 00:01:20.130 --> 00:01:50.709 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Oh, Melva, if you're unable to access days one and 2 you can go ahead and check them out on the hub. Oh, well, great! It is so great to see that so many of you have had such an amazing time. So so far, we have a whole series of great sessions for you today. Kicking off with mine. And Melva, I'll show you. Towards the end of this we'll have a QA session at the end, and I'll show you towards the end where you can find the replays just in case you need them. At that point. But I want to get into the meat of our presentation today. 9 00:01:50.740 --> 00:02:07.849 So for those of you who I have not met before, my name is Haley. I am the head of education here at pro writing aid, which is pretty much the best job in the world, because it means that I get to put on these summits for you 4 times per year. So if you have not been to one of these before, or if you have not been in a while. 10 00:02:08.060 --> 00:02:33.050 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: we do these genre weeks for free 4 times a year as a way to give back to the writing community. We started them in. We started doing writing webinars in 2020. Actually, obviously, when the pandemic happened and we weren't able to do in person events. And since then we've expanded them. We began with fantasy writers. Week. We have gone into romance writers, week crime writers week. And now Science fiction writers week as well. 11 00:02:33.050 --> 00:02:57.849 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So we do those 4 sessions every year, and we're hoping to expand that into other sessions like horror, as Malina is saying in the chat as well as other genres too. So please feel free as we're coming to the end of this week to come to more of those sessions. We would love to have you, I know, when I first started this I was not sure. If I you know, I knew that I would be putting these on for a while. 12 00:02:57.850 --> 00:02:59.220 Work. 13 00:02:59.330 --> 00:03:29.060 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: But I, you know, wasn't a big romance writer until I put on romance week, and then was like, Oh, my gosh! Romance is amazing! There's so much to learn from all of these writers. So, as you, you know again, as we keep into the get towards the end of the week, please stay in touch with pro writing aid. And because we have these free weeks 4 times per year, it's a really really great way to come and learn. And there's just so much to learn from all of the genres, even if this is not something, even if it's not a a genre that you think that you kind of write in? 14 00:03:29.140 --> 00:03:51.410 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So yeah, just as Chris said, you can learn from all the genres I you know, for instance, like I was saying, I learned so much about how to write amazing relationships and characters from from romance, for instance, and how to do tension and suspense from crime. There's just so much you can learn from everywhere. But the goal of our session today is to talk about how you can use providing it to support your editing process. 15 00:03:51.410 --> 00:04:03.970 I'm going to be talking about ways to manage the line editing of your writing, and specifically how to line edit with providing aid, though I'll also be giving you tips on how to line edit without providing aid as well. 16 00:04:04.200 --> 00:04:08.539 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So without further ado, I'm going to share my screen, and we can jump in 17 00:04:08.710 --> 00:04:33.639 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: so I'm going to be talking today about what I call the 5 principles of creating clarity, and as I just mentioned, my name is Haley. I am the head of education at providing aid. And actually, before I move on, I do just want to remind you if you have questions for me about providing aid, or about the presentation that I'm about to go through. Please put them into the QA. I'm gonna keep an eye on the chat, and but I bet that it will move pretty quickly, and since it's just me and here 18 00:04:33.640 --> 00:04:44.060 here it might be might be a bit hard to to keep up with. So if you have questions for me about providing aid or about the presentation, please put them into the QA, and we'll have time to go through that at the end. 19 00:04:44.690 --> 00:05:00.679 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay, so here is what we're going to talk about in this session. First, I'm going to talk to you about. Why, clarity is the most important goal for all writers, regardless of what you're writing or who you're writing for. Then I'm going to talk about 5 key principles that will make your writing more clear. 20 00:05:00.890 --> 00:05:13.410 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: And then, finally, I'm going to tell you how to apply those principles to your writing to make it more effective, and we get into the application. I'll talk to you about how to apply those principles using pro writing aid, but also how to apply those principles without it. 21 00:05:14.240 --> 00:05:39.180 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Let's dive in. So I believe that clarity is an essential part of storytelling. And this is because if your writing isn't clear, then your story is not going to engage readers. It doesn't matter if you have spent hours and hours on World Anvil building a really really compelling world and creating great characters. If you have an amazing map. And all of this, you know this, this just really really compelling story. If the actual 22 00:05:39.180 --> 00:05:44.849 mechanics of your sentences aren't clear, then your readers are not going to engage with that content 23 00:05:45.010 --> 00:06:09.399 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: as writers. Our main job is to get our meaning across clearly and effectively. So if our writing is too complicated or hard to follow, we're not doing our job, and I find that a lot of writers try to make their pros overly complicated, or worry about making their pros overly complicated, which again, then gets in the way of actually telling that really great story and introducing your readers to the characters you want them to to meet. 24 00:06:09.820 --> 00:06:22.109 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: If we have unclear writing. That basically means that our readers are going to spend more time figuring out what we're saying than actually engaging with all of that great story that you know, we've spent so much time thinking about. 25 00:06:22.110 --> 00:06:46.999 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Good writing is always going to prioritize communicating ideas over showing off fancy and confusing language. So this is something that I really struggled with. When I was first writing. I was always trying to show off how much I knew, you know kind of the witty turns of phrase I could put into my writing, and while that does have a place place in a lot of writing for me, it was getting in the way of communicating my story. So that's why I believe that clarity so important 26 00:06:47.000 --> 00:06:52.220 because at the heart we want to make sure our sentences are set up in a way that communicates our story. 27 00:06:53.520 --> 00:07:15.590 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So before we get any further. I wanna clarify what I mean about what I'm talking about clarity. So what I'm talking about clarity, I'm talking about 3 things. First, I'm talking about how easy your writing is to understand and just put a PIN on that for a second as we come to our second bullet point. The second thing that clarity is is whether or not your sentences are set up in a reader focused way. 28 00:07:15.590 --> 00:07:25.769 So when I'm talking about how easy your writing is to understand. You need to keep your readers in mind, and that's one of the things that I want us to remember. For this entire presentation 29 00:07:25.770 --> 00:07:51.860 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: clarity relates to who your readers are. What's clear for one group of readers is not going to be clear for another group of readers. So you really need to understand who your particular audience is when you're understanding how to edit for clarity. Because, again, if you're writing for romance, a romance audience, for instance, what's going to be clear to that audience might be very, very different than what your if you're writing an academic paper, or if you're writing 30 00:07:51.860 --> 00:08:07.110 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Wi-fi, different audiences have different understandings. Even if you're writing ya versus adult. Again, what's going to be clear is very different. So you need to make sure that you're understanding who your readers are when you're editing, to be able to better evaluate whether or not your writing is clear. 31 00:08:07.590 --> 00:08:31.919 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: And then finally, clarity is adding rich and specific language that adds to your readers understanding. So one of the things I see all the time from writers particularly working here at providing aid is that they worry, that that a software, or they worry, that editing is going to take away the personality from their voice, that it's gonna make it all sound the same. They're not going to be add able to, you know. Show off the what he turns the phrase they can have, or 32 00:08:31.920 --> 00:08:49.279 show off their, you know, vocabulary or just, you know, make things sound specific and in their voice, and that could not be further from the case. If you're doing clarity. Well, you are using rich, specific, original language. You're just using it effectively in specific places. And we'll talk about how to do that today. 33 00:08:49.410 --> 00:09:13.079 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: And then clarity, on the other hand, has absolutely nothing to do with. How simple or juvenile the ideas in your writing are, and it also has nothing to do with whether or not your pros is engaging, unique, or exciting. So, like I mentioned, you can have very unique, very individualistic pros while still being clear. And you can also talk about really really complicated adult ideas 34 00:09:13.080 --> 00:09:27.009 while still having simple and clear sentence structures. And I would actually argue that it's more important to have simple, clear sentence structures when you're talking about complicated adult ideas. So that way, no one's confused about what you're trying to say. And your meaning isn't hidden. 35 00:09:28.200 --> 00:09:47.429 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay? So now that we know clarity, what clarity is, where does how do we do it? So clarity starts at the sentence level. That's because sentences are like mini movies. They are complete stories in themselves. I want you to think about each sentence in your writing as a mini movie. Your reader is playing in their head. 36 00:09:47.610 --> 00:10:12.520 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So I saw someone in the chat earlier ask it, saying that I looked tan, and that I, wondering if I had gone to the beach. Right? So the sentence Haley goes to the beach is a mini movie in and of itself, you guys can all picture me going to the beach. Haley plays basketball. That's a Mini movie in and of itself, every sentence is a mini movie that's going to contribute to that. Your reader's understanding. So we need to make sure that when we're editing for clarity. 37 00:10:12.520 --> 00:10:37.509 we're making sure every single sentence is clear enough. So that that movie that our readers are playing is accurate in their mind. Especially this is especially important in in genres like sci-fi and fantasy, where we've spent so much time thinking about building those worlds. We really want that movie to be accurate to what we're trying to depict. Right? So again, our language is really, really important. So we have to start at the sentence level this kind of building block level. 38 00:10:37.510 --> 00:10:55.040 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: When we're editing our work for clarity. When we have clear sentences, we'll then have clear paragraphs, and when we have clear paragraphs we'll then have clear stories. But we'll never have clear stories if we don't have clear sentences. We need to start at the kind of sentence level in order to get to the clear story level. 39 00:10:56.220 --> 00:11:26.110 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So how do we get there? There are 5 principles to making sent excuse me to creating clarity in your sentences. I'm going to go through each of these principles. I'm gonna talk to you about what the principle is why I think it's so important. And then I'm going to talk to you about how to apply it. And when I get into the section where I talk about how to apply it. I'm going to talk about how to apply it, using pro writing aid. So you can see the software a bit and see what it does. But then I'm also gonna talk to you about how to apply it without using pro writing aid. And so you can either use pro writing 40 00:11:26.110 --> 00:11:43.879 the free or pre premium version, or you can again just apply it yourself, no matter what I'll take you through both. So our first principle of creating clarity is to make your subjects your stars. So subjects are the main actors in your text. It's important to prioritize them and treat them that way. 41 00:11:44.710 --> 00:12:01.609 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: If you've written a sentence with passive voice, that means you've put the object of your sentence before the subject of your sentence, writing in this way takes away the power from your subjects. So here's an example of a passive voice sentence. The present was opened by Jane. 42 00:12:01.910 --> 00:12:19.540 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: If we return to that concept of the Mini movie. And if I were to slow this sentence down to a really really slow movie, the present was opened by Jane, that movie that you're playing is going to kind of look like this picture here, where the present pops in on the movie screen way before Jane does 43 00:12:19.710 --> 00:12:43.109 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: in a sentence. That's this simple. That's not going to get too in the way of of your reader's understanding. But as your sentences get more complex, passive voice can often be too wordy and confusing. It's making something that should be simple again, overly complex, and can negatively affect readers. But that being said passive voice, is not grammatically incorrect. 44 00:12:43.110 --> 00:13:02.130 so you can use passive voice in your writing. It's just important to choose when and for many of us, as writers. Passive voice is kind of a bad habit that we don't think about, or we don't catch. And again, because it's not grammatically incorrect. It's not something that's going to be flagged in a grammar check, a typical kind of grammar spelling checker and Microsoft word. 45 00:13:02.150 --> 00:13:09.790 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So we need to intentionally make sure when we're editing that we're using passive voice for clear reasons, not just because it's a bad habit. 46 00:13:10.860 --> 00:13:22.610 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So here's when I recommend that it's okay to use passive voice. The first is, if the subject of your sentence is unknown. So, for instance, Stonehenge was built around 5,000 years ago. 47 00:13:22.690 --> 00:13:46.029 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: In this instance we don't know who built Stonehenge. So it's okay to have the passive construction was built because there's no one there. We don't know who it is. You can also use passive voice, because the subject, if the subject of the sentence is irrelevant. So, for instance, the time in life building was constructed in 1959 and changed. The skyline was constructed as a passive construction. Here. 48 00:13:46.110 --> 00:14:03.159 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: We don't know. We don't learn who constructed, but it doesn't matter for this for this for this sentence. Right? It's irrelevant. You can also use passive voice if you are trying to make a deliberate choice. So, as Karen in the chat is saying something about like avoiding the question, or 49 00:14:03.160 --> 00:14:26.390 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: avoiding agency, asking who sometimes, as a writer, you want to make the reader ask who? So Mary realized a suspicious package had been left on her door. Mary doesn't know we're kind of creating more tension here by not understanding who who who left the passage right, or who left the package. The passive voice in this instance is making us kind of feel Mary's confused confusion. 50 00:14:26.610 --> 00:14:41.049 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: The same thing is often applied in newspaper headlines, so they say something like, you know, a home was broken into, or, you know, person was killed, or something like that, and a lot of times that's to get you to click in and see 51 00:14:41.120 --> 00:15:12.449 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: who did this right. They they're they're kind of making that deliberate choice at that point to make you click in, to want to read. So those are when you should use passive voice. In almost every other instance I would say that you shouldn't use passive voice because it's going to make your writing less effective. So if you have a passive construction, and it's not in one of those 3 categories. What should you do? You basically need to fix the sentence so that the subject the doer, comes first. So that sentence we had before the present was opened by Jane. Jane is the doer. She needs to come 52 00:15:12.450 --> 00:15:25.079 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: first, so we can switch the sentence to Jane opens the present again. Then we have here kind of the image of Jane. She is the bigger the bigger focus, not the present. Right? So how do you fix this yourself. 53 00:15:25.370 --> 00:15:34.730 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: One of the first ways you can fix it yourself is by looking for the word buy, or a place where the word buy would answer the question, who did this? That's usually a good indication. 54 00:15:34.870 --> 00:16:01.389 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: that the word that you have passive construction there? And, Chris, can you make sure to pop that question in the chat. Just so. I don't lose it. For the end. You also wanna look for 2 b plus verbs. So things like was opened by Jane. That also will give you an indication that you have passive voice there, and if you found either of those instances, a 2 b plus verb construction or the word V. By you can switch your sentence so that the doer comes first. 55 00:16:01.450 --> 00:16:10.659 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Now, providing aid can also help you fix this. So I am in the pro-writing aid web editor right now, and I have a sample text pulled up here. 56 00:16:11.010 --> 00:16:28.239 and what pro writing aid can do is help you find instances of passive voice in your writing. So, for instance, here, in the style, see or excuse me, the real time report. I have instances of passive voice, highlighted in purple. I can find them, and then I can do a couple of different things. I can either rewrite them myself. 57 00:16:28.290 --> 00:16:53.079 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: or if I'd like to have rephrases and have pro writing aids suggest a way to rewrite the sentence I can have. Pro I can do suggest rephrases, and that will give me other options for how to rewrite the sentence. You can then either click to insert those into your writing, or you can just take inspiration from them and rewrite it yourself. So one of the things that I really love about the kind of scalability of pro writing aids features, is it both gives you information, and then 58 00:16:53.080 --> 00:17:17.880 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: and it can help you implement that if you would like it to. But it also doesn't have to. If you don't want to implement it yourself. So per writing, and I think does a really really great job of giving you all of this information about your writing that you might not find otherwise. So things like passive voice. And then again, like I said, You can either it highlights it for you. You can choose to change it yourself, or if you'd like to use for writing it, to help find suggestions for ways to rephrase that, then you can use it too. But that's completely 59 00:17:17.880 --> 00:17:19.429 the optional, and it's up to you 60 00:17:20.599 --> 00:17:28.689 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: alright. So that is our first principle. Our second principle is my favorite, and it is dope to reduce glue words. 61 00:17:29.420 --> 00:17:34.439 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So in writing you should always prioritize working words over glue words. 62 00:17:35.180 --> 00:17:54.970 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: What are working words and glue words? So working words are words that contain a sentence's most essential information. You cannot change them, or the meaning of the sentence will change. Think about words like nouns, verbs, and adjectives. If I return to that example sentence I had before Haley goes to the beach. 63 00:17:54.970 --> 00:18:20.089 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Haley is a working word. I can't change Haley for Chris, or the meaning of the sentence will change. I couldn't change Beach, either. If I change speech to Mall, the meaning of the sentence would change. If I changed goes to hates the beach, the meaning of the sentence would change, so that sentence is full of working words. I cannot change them, or the meaning of the sentence will change. So those are working words. 64 00:18:21.170 --> 00:18:37.049 Other words in the sentence are glue, words, glue, words. Make the se essential pieces of the sentence stick together, but you can reduce, remove, or replace them without changing the essential heart of what the sentence is or what that Mini movie is like. 65 00:18:37.820 --> 00:18:54.550 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: If you have too many glue words, and we'll look at an example of this in just a second. If you have too many glue words. Your sentence is going to become sticky. A sticky sentence is going to be overly complicated and complex for your readers. Now let's look at this sticky sentence. 66 00:18:54.890 --> 00:19:21.549 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Dave walked over into the backyard of the school in order to see if there was a new bicycle that he could use in his class. Before we get into what the glue words are. I want to start by having you tell me in the chat what are the working words in the sentence? You can just go ahead and type them in the chat. Remember, working words are the words that contain essential information. Go ahead, and I'll give you about 20 s to pop the working words into the chat, and we'll see if yours match up with mine. 67 00:19:22.950 --> 00:19:24.260 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: I got Dave 68 00:19:24.500 --> 00:19:27.440 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: backyard school bicycle 69 00:19:29.260 --> 00:19:42.960 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: class. Okay, yep. Class backyard school bicycle. Yep. yeah. So we've got a lot of people school backyard, bicycle class. Exactly. So. Here are the working words that I identified. 70 00:19:43.200 --> 00:19:48.810 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Dave walked backyard school, new bicycle use class. 71 00:19:49.140 --> 00:20:09.629 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: I could not change Dave, or the meaning of the sentence would change. I could not change school. If I change school to hospital. The meaning of the sentence would change. If I change backyard to gymnasium, the meaning of the sentence would change. All of these are working words because they're essential to the meaning of the sentence that means everything else in this sentence is a glue word. 72 00:20:09.690 --> 00:20:27.679 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: It's making the sentence make sense. But there are so many glue words that the sentence is out of proportion. There's a lot of filler here, a lot of things that are making the sentence 6 stick together, but aren't actually conveying a lot of information, so we can reduce, remove, or replace these to make the sentence more effective. 73 00:20:27.900 --> 00:20:40.360 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So how do we do that? The good and the bad news is that there isn't one way to fix a sticky sentence. And I say good and bad, because if we return to the idea of you know, author voice. 74 00:20:40.480 --> 00:21:02.919 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: every single sticky sentence can be fixed in an almost incalculable number of ways. So every single one of us in just a second are, gonna have a chance to fix that sentence that we looked at earlier, and every single time I do this presentation, almost every person in the chat comes up with a different option. So that's good news. Because, again, if you find sticky sentences in your writing, you can change them, and you can change them in a way that makes sense to you and your voice as an author. 75 00:21:02.920 --> 00:21:15.089 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: The bad news about that is that there's not just an easy an easy fix that every time you see a blue word, you know, to do this thing or this thing, it's always going to depend on what your intent is. But before we get to intimate how to fix, let's go back to that sentence we had. 76 00:21:15.830 --> 00:21:38.220 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So we had this really long sentence. Dave walked over into the backyard of the school in order to see if there was a new bicycle that he could use in his class. We identified our working words in here now, I'd love to give you a minute to rewrite this sentence, reducing, removing, or replacing those glue words here, so I'll give you a second, and you can type into the chat your options for 77 00:21:38.670 --> 00:21:40.770 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: fixing the sentence to make it less sticky. 78 00:21:44.370 --> 00:21:52.309 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Nice. So Molina has Dave scan the schoolyard for a usable class bike, Malina, I think that's the first time I've ever seen that sentence done. Very good. 79 00:21:53.560 --> 00:21:55.589 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Let's see what other options we come up with. 80 00:22:02.120 --> 00:22:13.579 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Dave walked to the school's backyard, looking for a bike to use in his class. Dave walked to the schoolyard into the school yard to find any bicycle to use in his class. Dave walked to the school's backyard. 81 00:22:13.690 --> 00:22:17.739 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Yeah. Dave walked behind the school for a new bicycle to use in class. 82 00:22:18.410 --> 00:22:48.810 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Dave walked into the school's backyard searching for a new bicycle. Dave walked. Yeah, so okay, this is great. This is exactly what I was talking about. We have 10 to 15 10 to 15 different sentences here, and every single sentence is coming in is slightly different than the other sentences in there. Some are really close, but a lot are very, very different from each other, but they're all better and stronger than the sentence we have here. They're all making the sentence more effective. And they're all making the sentence more 83 00:22:48.850 --> 00:23:13.730 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: again clearer to the point. That Mini movie is becoming more accurate. My version was. Dave checked the school's backyard for a do bicycle to use in class. But again, none of these are better or worse than anything else. They all have made an improvement on that original sentence. So as the writer, you can decide, what am I trying to include what's essential, what's not essential? And then how can I make the sentence more effective, reducing, removing, or replacing those glue? Words 84 00:23:14.570 --> 00:23:24.440 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: alright. So how do you fix these sentences yourself? The first thing I would recommend is to look for overly long sentences. Now, what 85 00:23:24.480 --> 00:23:45.190 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: is overly long is going to depend on who you're writing for. So for younger audiences, something that's shorter might be a little bit longer. But if you're writing for adults, I would say anything. Over 18 words is probably too long and often, if it's over 18 words long, it's going to have glue words in there. If you've identified some of those overly long sentences, then you want to look for the glue words 86 00:23:45.190 --> 00:24:11.970 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: sometimes looking for the glue words is easier by figuring out what your working words are, so what your essential words are. Sometimes it's easier to just look for words like prepositions, conjunctions, articles, those tend to be glue, words that again, you can reduce, remove, or replace, to make the sentence make sense and make it more clear and concise. Now, once you found those sentences and identified those glue words, you can rewrite them. And again, there's not one specific way to do that. You can do it in multiple, different ways. 87 00:24:13.080 --> 00:24:20.859 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Now, within providing aid, there are a number of ways to do this yourself. So first you can use the rephrase feature I was talking about before 88 00:24:21.880 --> 00:24:45.690 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: by highlighting here, and you can shorten sentences which again, if you find something that's overly long. That's going to give you a different way to say it. And it's going to reduce, remove, or replace those glue words. You can also, if you just want information about your sentences, come into our sticky sentence, report the sticky sentence. Report gives you a bunch of interesting information. The first is your glue index. So it tells you what your overall percentage of glue to working words is. 89 00:24:45.690 --> 00:25:08.129 we typically recommend that you have about 40% glue words and 60% working words. So this dot, this sample document I have here has a little bit over 40% blue words. So it's something that I might wanna focus on. And then it also highlights, sticky and semi sticky sentences in your in your writing. Sticky sentences and pro writing aid are words are sentences that have above 60% glue words in them 90 00:25:08.130 --> 00:25:20.599 semi-sticky have between 40 to 60. So you could find those sentences. And then again, you can either rewrite them to yourself, or you can go back in and suggest rephrases or ways to rewrite it. You're using providing aid. 91 00:25:23.650 --> 00:25:28.900 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Alright. Our third principle of creating clarity is to use powerful verbs. 92 00:25:30.510 --> 00:25:43.080 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Verbs are the engines of our writing. They are their actors, they are what power things forward. But as writers, often we fall into the trap of using weak verbs that don't say what we mean, and we tend to do this in 2 different ways. 93 00:25:43.650 --> 00:26:11.979 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: The first is by using hidden verbs, so hidden verbs are often are. Excuse me, are also known as nominalizations. I have an example of one here. We will make an announcement of the winner on Friday. In this sentence the nominalization make an announcement, hides the powerful verb announce. So we're hiding announce which is what we're actually doing behind the phrase, make an announcement. So it's taking the power out of that action word and hiding it in a less powerful phrase. 94 00:26:13.150 --> 00:26:23.759 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: The other way that we tend to hide our verbs in writing is by using weak verbs that require adverbs like very to modify what they mean. So instead of saying something 95 00:26:23.870 --> 00:26:37.199 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Instead of using a powerful verb, saying something like, I ran quickly towards the bus again. You're using an adverb to say what you mean to talk about how you ran. Instead of using a more powerful verb that could create a more evocative way of understanding. 96 00:26:37.830 --> 00:26:56.669 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: you want to make sure that you let your verbs power your writing and bring it forward. So you want to make sure that you're removing nominalizations. So instead of something like, make an announcement, you want to have the actual free, just verb that you're having. So instead of make a decision, you might just use decide. You want to use the actual verb itself. 97 00:26:56.670 --> 00:27:13.020 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: And then you also want to use strong verbs that say what you mean. So instead of saying, I ran quickly. I dashed, I sprinted I hurried towards the bus again. Words that are going to get to what you actually mean, and don't require an additional adverb to clarify that meaning. 98 00:27:14.580 --> 00:27:30.500 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: One of the best ways to do this is to look for again those nominalization phrases, the noun, the weaker verb plus again, that kind of app. Verb. Excuse me that noun phrase, and then in providing it, there's a number of different ways to find it yourself. So first in this real time report 99 00:27:30.660 --> 00:27:55.640 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: you'll find examples of of places where you have. We haven't made the decision here for writing. It will help you understand where you found that, and then you can again choose to remove that nominalization, and then you'll also find places where you've used adverbs. Here's an adverb with adjective, actually, but it'll else it will help you find places where you've used used adverbs, and then you can replace those with stronger words that say exactly what you mean. 100 00:27:58.320 --> 00:28:02.830 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: All right. Our fourth principle of creating clarity is to target correct readability. 101 00:28:04.810 --> 00:28:22.010 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Audiences prefer works that are easy to read. And this is something that's often surprising, particularly for newer writers. Most audiences prefer works that are written at a seventh grade, Us. Reading level, which means that they're written for readers who are between 11 and 12 years old. 102 00:28:22.240 --> 00:28:39.860 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: That does not mean that the ideas in those works are suitable for 11 or 12 year olds, but rather that the pros there could be understood by an 11 or 12 year old. So audiences, particularly if you're writing mass market fiction are going to prefer that their pros is actually easier to read rather than more complicated. 103 00:28:40.940 --> 00:29:04.519 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So what does that mean if we're thinking about making something easy to read, the first thing we're thinking about is that ideas are the stars of our writing. When our work is readable, it lets our ideas shine so our audiences aren't worried about going and finding a dictionary or trying to understand word choice. Instead, they're focusing on the ideas in our, in our content. It also means that we're choosing our words carefully. 104 00:29:04.520 --> 00:29:22.579 We're not having to forego all interesting words. We're just having to be choosy with the words that we have in there. So I always like to use the example of back when I was an English teacher. I was writing assessments for students. And I was writing science assessments for students, and I had to use 105 00:29:22.890 --> 00:29:31.230 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: words like photosynthesis, and my students were really young, so I needed to make sure that they, the the assessment, was at a fair reading level for who they were. 106 00:29:31.230 --> 00:29:54.340 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: You needed to do that. I could use the word photosynthesis, but I had to make sure that everything around the word. The word photosynthesis was at a suitable reading level for those students. So I'm not saying that to make your work readable you have to forego all interesting words. You just need to be choosy about what you're including and what you're discluding. You also need to think about who your audience is. 107 00:29:54.340 --> 00:30:04.810 Every audience is different, and you should consider who yours are when targeting readability and Karen and the the chat is talking about sixth grade reading level. 108 00:30:04.810 --> 00:30:28.800 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: This is what? Where audience comes in. You do not need to have sixth grade reading level for every single thing you're writing. It depends on what you're trying to write. So if you are writing for mass market consumption, that likely will be at a different reading level, or or that kind of like sixth to seventh grade reading level. However, if you're writing for a more niche audience or a different type of audience, you could absolutely have a higher readability level. 109 00:30:28.800 --> 00:30:57.429 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: You need to understand who you're trying to target and what that audience particularly likes and expects from their readability level in order to assess whether your work is at the right level or not. Again, the larger the audience, the more you're going to have to go. A bit more simple and kind of the the and the reading level, you target. But that is absolutely not to say that you cannot have a higher readability level. You just need to think about who your audience is and what you're trying to get across right? So that is where it matters. 110 00:30:57.430 --> 00:31:06.300 Every single audience and every single book is going to have a different reading level that you need to target again, depending on who you're trying to market for and who's going to read that work. 111 00:31:07.130 --> 00:31:32.119 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So that's what readability means. On the other hand, it does not mean that your pros is boring again. As I said, you can use unique words and structures. Just do it consciously. And again, keep your audience in mind. If you are writing for a Ya. Audience, they're likely going to want to be more involved in the character of the plot and that type of thing. Then there are, and again, seeing very, very interesting pros. If you're writing literary fiction or something else. On the other hand, your audience. 112 00:31:32.120 --> 00:31:42.610 this is probably going going to be more invested in your pros and sentence structures. So consider who you're writing for and what you're trying to say when assessing again how your structures and sentences are there. 113 00:31:43.330 --> 00:32:01.970 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: You also have readability also has nothing to do with how, whether or not, your ideas are dumbed down, or your writing is too simple again. This is something that I often see is that oh, you know, it's it's taking the complexity away from my ideas. If I'm talking about this in a sixth grade way. But, as people are saying in the chat. 114 00:32:02.120 --> 00:32:28.179 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: it actually has nothing to do with that. Complicated ideas deserve simple, clear language so that people can understand it as Margie has with the Eisenstein quote. If you can't explain it simple? Simply. You're probably not understanding it well enough. It's the same thing for our audiences. We want them to have that accurate Mini movie. We need to make sure that we're making that accurate for them. And again, as both Kenny and Jenny Karen and Jenny excuse me, are saying 115 00:32:28.230 --> 00:32:45.330 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: again, you can see complex sentences. It's just making sure that if depending on who your audience is, it's not that every single sentence is complex, have complexity, have unique words and structures, but depending on who your audience is, you might want to make that, you know every couple of paragraphs rather than every single sentence that you have. 116 00:32:45.330 --> 00:33:09.279 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So how do you determine whether your readability is right or wrong for your audience? You will want to use something called a readability score, a readability score basically predicts who will be able to read your writing. And there are many types of readability scores to choose from, almost all of which are free online. So there are things like the flush concave method, the Dale chall. They all use different formulas. But it's basically it's reading your writing and predicting who would be able to read it. 117 00:33:09.470 --> 00:33:38.909 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So what you want to understand is again, who you're trying to write for. How broad is the audience you're trying to appeal for what will they likely understand? Then you can run your work through readability calculator, and see if that matches up. If you have gone through and realized. Oh, you know what I am trying to write for mass market. But my readability calculator is a bit too high. Here are a few things that you could do. The first is to use easier vocabulary. See if there are places where you can. Replace complex words with simpler ones. 118 00:33:38.910 --> 00:33:54.099 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Next, you can look and see if you can shorten your sentence length. Shorter sentences tend to bring readability scores down, whereas longer. Complex sentences, as Jenny says, with those subsidiary clauses. Those can make your readability score go up a bit. So again, if you're trying to lower it. 119 00:33:54.460 --> 00:34:03.540 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: You can shorten those sentences. You can also remove jargon, pass the voice and glue words. Those are other ways that you can do that. 120 00:34:04.020 --> 00:34:20.430 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: And somebody asked in the chat, can you add more complex sentences. Exactly. If you, if your score is too low, you can also lengthen this. So if your score is too low, you can add more intro, like interesting vocabulary. Back you can lengthen sentences. All of those types of things will increase readability as well 121 00:34:22.630 --> 00:34:27.380 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: alright. And then there are a number of ways to fix this with providing aid as well. So first 122 00:34:27.920 --> 00:34:47.540 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: you can look through a readability report to get an overall understanding of your documents readability. It will then highlight, difficult and slightly difficult to read paragraphs. So you can see if there are particular paragraphs you need to pay attention to. Then, if we come back into our real time checker. It will find places where you are. 123 00:34:47.540 --> 00:34:58.340 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: saying things in ways that might be too complicated. So you places where you can enhance your readability by simpler sentence structures, as well as that kind of sticky sentence, and pass the voice fixes that I mentioned before as well. 124 00:34:59.050 --> 00:35:14.429 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: And then the excuse me, the sidebar here will also show you your overall readability score, and it will show you kind of the target. The target range for your particular genre, so you can come in and change here to see if there are differences as well depending on what you're looking for 125 00:35:16.310 --> 00:35:27.520 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: alright, and that brings us to our final principle, clar principle of clarity, which is to choose specific words. So I've been talking a lot here about how to cut things, how to make them simple. Now, I'm going to talk about how to add back in. 126 00:35:28.180 --> 00:35:50.209 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So if your writing is too big, it's going to lack the specificity. Your readers need to understand exactly what you're trying to say and to make that Mini movie accurate. So let's look at this very, very basic sentence. Kate made some improvements to her cabin, and now it's worth more. And tell me in the chat, what do you think Kate is doing to her cabin. 127 00:35:50.490 --> 00:35:51.979 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: based on this sentence. 128 00:35:58.230 --> 00:35:59.980 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: replacing the floors. 129 00:36:00.340 --> 00:36:23.060 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: waving a magic wand and expell, expelling evil spirits, renovating no idea, new paint, new carpet, refurbished hard to say. Exactly, Ellen, Ellen nailed it. It's hard to say this is an accurate send. It's clear, but we really have absolutely no idea what Kate is doing. She's increasing the value by improving it. Yes, Christine, but like what she's doing to improve it. No idea. 130 00:36:23.060 --> 00:36:37.929 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: If we return to that complex concept of the Mini movie. Every single one of our Mini movies is different here, because every single one of us has a different picture of what Kate is doing right? So that Mini movie, there's going to be 175 mini movies. Because 131 00:36:37.960 --> 00:36:39.230 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: it's not clear enough. 132 00:36:41.370 --> 00:37:10.579 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Now, if we have a more ex specific sentence. Kate replaced the bathroom suite, repainted the living room, laid hardwood floors in your cabin, increasing its value by 10. We have a much more accurate Mini movie. We might have some slight variations between us on like what the tile looks like or what the color is for the living room. But overall. The things that Kate is doing are much more specific here, and really help us understand what Kate is doing and and and what the kind of result of that is 133 00:37:10.810 --> 00:37:34.639 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: so. The key point I want to have here is that clarity does not always equal brevity. Sometimes you will need to go simpler, to be clear. But sometimes you also need to go more specific and add words in to make sure that that Mini movie is accurate to what you're trying to say. So you always want to fix this by asking yourself for each of your sentences? Is the movie a reader playing in their head 134 00:37:34.640 --> 00:37:47.809 accurate to what I'm trying to show. You could even ask this of people like, what do you picture with this sentence? And that's a good indication of whether or not you're doing a good job with the specificity. You need to describe that Mini movie. 135 00:37:48.920 --> 00:38:13.879 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Now, a couple of my favorite features in pro writing aid to help you do this? Are the diction report which highlights vague and abstract words, so places where you have used phrases that don't really mean anything that could be really open to interpretation, and then it can also find more specific words. Here again, in the real time checkers so that you can find places where again, you can choose better words to help you say what you actually mean instead of 136 00:38:13.880 --> 00:38:19.320 of instead of again just creating something that really could absolutely mean anything. 137 00:38:21.800 --> 00:38:51.050 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Alright. So as a brief recap today, before we get into questions, we talked about why clarity is the most important goal for all writers. Then we talked about 5 principles that will help make your writing more clear. And then we also talked about how to apply those principles to your writing to make it more effective as a reminder. The best way to think about clarity is to think about that Mini movie. Is it accurate to what I am trying to portray? Or are there any things that I can do to again make that movie clearer and simpler for my right readers? 138 00:38:51.920 --> 00:38:56.049 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Alright. And with that we will get into questions. 139 00:38:57.570 --> 00:38:58.620 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay? 140 00:38:59.160 --> 00:39:16.610 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So the first question is an answer in your FAQ. Page says that pro writing aid only supports English. Yes, that is still true right now. We don't have any plans to support any other languages the pro writing aid paid version compares to Gram release. So 141 00:39:16.930 --> 00:39:17.870 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: there's a 142 00:39:18.590 --> 00:39:37.139 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: providing it just has more features than grammarly. We have 25 different writing reports, and so there's just a a wider breadth of things that you can do in terms of like paid to paid. I believe we're about the same price. And again, I providing it just has more features in terms of what you're trying to do. And a lot of that specifically tailored to creative writing. 143 00:39:38.820 --> 00:39:49.010 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay, so what are some alternatives. So yeah, if we go back to that part of this session, basically, my recommendation would be to switch it to active voice instead of passive. 144 00:39:50.550 --> 00:40:13.840 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay, so, Chris, that's a good question when using past the voice. How do you know when a deliberate choice is a good one? So I think. Chris. The first thing is to make sure that the passive the choice falls into one of those 3 buckets. That's the first thing is like, is it. The bucket of? Is the subject unknown? Is the subject irrelevant, or am I intentionally trying to create suspicion, or, you know, hide the subject for some reason 145 00:40:13.840 --> 00:40:38.809 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: that's the first indicator. If that is true, then the next thing you can do is look at the overall construction of the sentence as well. So is the passive construction here, making the sentence too long. Is it making the sentence harder to understand that can also help you evaluate that as well, but the first assistant think, you know, is this does it fall into one of those 3 buckets? And then it's to look at the overall construction, and make sure the passive construction 146 00:40:38.810 --> 00:40:45.690 getting in the way of your readers understanding and if you have questions, I know that a couple are coming in the chat. Can you? 147 00:40:45.820 --> 00:40:50.659 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: please just put them into the chat so that I could make, or the QA. Not the chat, so I can make sure I find them. 148 00:40:51.540 --> 00:41:14.279 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: okay, so do you think? Don't state the obvious in my novels. Writing was a pretty good idea. What I mean is, I should at least make the reader guess, and try to at least make their own theory, to make some sort of understanding of my book, instead of bloating them with tons of info jumping which that could bore them, or, should I say, try to tease the readers with tons of questions, or something slightly abstract to make them engaged more. 149 00:41:14.280 --> 00:41:38.119 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: It really depends on what you're trying to write and how you're trying to write it, and who your audience is as well. Yes, most readers want to engage and guess, and there's fun in that. But how much suspense, or how much guessing that you're going to have will depend on the type of story that you're trying to tell. If you're writing mystery or thriller it, you know, kind of like our speaker, Lauren Buches does in a sci-fi world. 150 00:41:38.120 --> 00:41:57.760 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Then you're gonna want to have a lot of that kind of guessing tension. But if you're not, then you won't. And same thing with info dumping sometimes in fantasy into sci-fi books. We do a lot of upfront info dumping on kind of the world, and sometimes that's necessary. But again, it depends who your readers are, what you're trying to write. And then, yeah. And then you can kind of go from there. 151 00:41:59.200 --> 00:42:08.520 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Frank asked, how do you activate the rephrasing tool? So you need to highlight any. Let me just share my screen, and I can show you to. 152 00:42:11.110 --> 00:42:18.610 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So if you highlight a sentence. you should hear. See this rephrase, button pop up, and then there's a number of different ways to rephrase. 153 00:42:21.130 --> 00:42:32.510 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Lou asks, is there a free version. Yes, there is a forever free version of pro writing aid. You can just sign up by going to proridingade.com, and that will give you the free version, and then you can upgrade from there if you would like to, at any point. 154 00:42:32.710 --> 00:42:45.310 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: and I let me just find the discount code as well. So I can make sure to put that in the chat. If anybody would like to take advantage of our 40% off yearly. Here we go. Okay, 155 00:42:48.370 --> 00:43:07.050 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: If you were wanting to focus more on the present, almost more than Jane. With the passive sentence, the present was opened by Jane. Be accepted. Yes, Lou, so if you are, if you do want to, if you do want to focus more on the present, then yes, it's okay. Again. Ultimately, the rules of clarity are challenging because 156 00:43:07.050 --> 00:43:19.260 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: because none of them are incorrect. So it's not incorrect to have passive voice. You just want to make sure you're choosing to do it rather than having it kind of be something that happens as a result of a bad habit. 157 00:43:20.900 --> 00:43:28.040 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay, this providing it help us find the hooks in our story, our plot, not right now, we're focused specifically on the line editing area. 158 00:43:31.480 --> 00:43:40.359 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Does pro writing. Aids AI offer different type of writing besides fiction. Yes, it can. It can be used for all types of writing, business, academic, etc. 159 00:43:42.220 --> 00:43:54.209 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Arith asks if you use the rephrase feature in a sentence, would this be considered? AI. Yes, rephrases our generative. AI. I will say that. This is kind of like an AI 160 00:43:55.460 --> 00:44:19.690 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: basically every anything in any grammar checker. Even spelling checks are all powered by AI generative AI, which is the kind of newer thing that's on the market, which is when you're actually creating sentences. That is what's used in the rephrase checker. But pro writing aid is, and ho! Always has used AI, because AI is again, how you do things like find that you misspell the word or find that you put in comma. So there's always been AI and pro writing aid. 161 00:44:19.690 --> 00:44:42.059 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: again. This generative AI new, the new AI, that's just come out with Chat Gbt, and things like that. That's the things that help you rephrase right? So there's always going to be AI. So to the answer is there AI and prorating aid? Yes, and always has been the new generative. AI is for things like rephrases. So if you're wanting to avoid generative AI, you can use all of the other features and then just not use something like Re rephrase 162 00:44:44.230 --> 00:44:58.739 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: do I think sci-fi is a piece of writing that's directly linked to one's innermost thoughts or feelings. It really just depends on what you're what kind of sci-fi you're trying to write? Some of it can be, and some some can, cannot really depends on what you're trying to write as an author. 163 00:45:00.260 --> 00:45:12.230 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: I'm okay. Sometimes we have to be clear, but also using less words, reduces the imagery and vivid details. Yes, this was kind of what I was getting at at the at the 164 00:45:12.550 --> 00:45:37.340 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: final principle of we need to be specific while also being clear, a good way to judge, that is glue words versus working words. So that final sentence I had about Kate making improvements to her house. It was longer. The second sentence was much longer, but almost every word in there was a working word. I couldn't change those words without changing the meaning of the sentence. So that's a really good indication that the sentence is 165 00:45:37.340 --> 00:45:57.149 the the words there are necessary. If they are working, they're likely necessary. So that's one of the ways that I help distinguish whether or not again, I I'm being simple enough, or whether or not I'm you know, being complex as to understand, are the words in my sentence working? If so, it's probably okay to be a bit longer and more specific. If not, then I might want to look at reducing 166 00:46:00.110 --> 00:46:01.430 of rights 167 00:46:02.040 --> 00:46:19.499 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: providing it uses the flesh Kincaid method to measure grade, level, it, which again, all of these, all of the readability checkers look at things like sentence, length, word choice. It's a whole variety of factors, but it uses flesh, flash flesh, Kincaid. Excuse me. 168 00:46:19.820 --> 00:46:47.300 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Nicholas says. How would you rate the free grammar and spelling checker onward. Nicholas, I think it's fine. But for me, I want to have more. II wanna have the readability and style checks, which is why I use providing it in word rather than just word itself. It's good to have the grammar spelling checks. It'll catch most things. But again, I want to have things like the passive voice checker. I like to use repeats as well, because I tend to repeat myself when I'm writing on fiction. Yeah, that type of thing. 169 00:46:48.210 --> 00:47:12.659 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay? Sierra asks. Since publishers are cracking down on the use of AI in novel writing, and both pro writing in the grammarly use. AI. What is a novelist to do if we want to use those suggestions? It's a really good question, and I, to be honest, I don't know that there's a good answer to it now, because a lot of things around AI are being sorted out both ethically and legally right now. So I could give you an answer right now. But I also think that that answer will likely change within the next 6 months 170 00:47:12.660 --> 00:47:49.260 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: to a year. So there's almost no use in me giving an answer, because again, it's very, very much still, a a way that an evolving new way that humanity is dealing with writing. So that's the first thing. There's a couple of things that I would suggest. If you particularly want to use the changes one is to think about your overall percentage of change. If you're changing just a sentence here and there, it's probably fine. But if you're changing every single sentence that might start to cross an ethical line. But again, it depends on who you are and what you're trying to write. So it really is really up to you. 171 00:47:49.540 --> 00:48:13.179 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: The next thing is that you could use the rephrases or features like that for inspiration, but then rewrite them yourself as well. So that's another thing to think about. And then the other thing I would say is again, think about that, as somebody said in the chat that kind of assistive AI, which is grammar style. Spelling checks versus the generative AI, which is like rephrasing assistive. AI has been around for years and years and years, and nobody's have it 172 00:48:13.180 --> 00:48:35.230 like, that's fine. Nobody publishers are not having problems with that. But if you are worried about how publisher having a problem. You might want to avoid the generative AI. But again, I just wanna say that this is a very, very evolving field. What's true now was not true 6 months ago, and will not be true 6 months from now. So I think this is something, you know, as we come to Sci-fi week next year. It'll be really interesting to kind of see how the field is evolved. 173 00:48:36.100 --> 00:48:43.729 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Gregory asked. Is rephrase only on paid membership. No, it's on free as well. You can get 10 rephrases per day every year. 174 00:48:44.970 --> 00:48:56.859 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Is there a tutorial on providing aid for how to learn to use each feature? Yes, there's a Youtube channel that has how to use each feature as well as a FAQ on our website. 175 00:48:57.360 --> 00:48:59.480 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: No discount on lifetime. 176 00:48:59.530 --> 00:49:12.300 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: quite honestly, lifetime. we're a company, and we need to continue to have users so yearly helps us and so we only just. We only discount lifetime at Black Friday. So keep an eye for that if you'd like to look for that. 177 00:49:13.270 --> 00:49:33.869 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: and I know there's a lot of questions coming through the chat. Please make sure that you drop them into the QA. I'm gonna try to get through as many in the QA. As I possibly can, but the chats we still got about 15 in the QA. And then the chat is moving pretty quickly. And then, Shannon, I know you asked about us presenting as a speaker send an email to Hello at providing 8 com. And we'll have a look at that. 178 00:49:36.830 --> 00:49:49.930 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Casey says, why does sometimes for writing it correct itself. It creates endless loops. It's usually just a bug, Casey. So if you click, report incorrect, that will that will report our report. The suggestion, and then we can fix it. 179 00:49:52.770 --> 00:50:08.460 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Tony says I, use scrivener. Is there an easy way of using the providing aid reports without copying and pasting back into the application and then copying it back. Tony, right now. The best way to do that is to use the desktop app 180 00:50:08.460 --> 00:50:31.290 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: in the desktop app. You can open your dot script or dot script X files. You can make changes there and then hit, save, and then just reopen it in Scriptner. So it's the same file. You're just opening it in 2 different applications, and that will give you the full full report. You can also open, providing it everywhere in Scribner right now. But that's not gonna give you all the reports we're still working on. In increasing that. 181 00:50:33.660 --> 00:50:35.550 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: let's do. Okay. 182 00:50:37.050 --> 00:50:47.240 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: If you recently renewed your account. Can you get the 40% off there? I'll send an email to hello@prowritingade.com, and just mentioned my name in it, and I'll see what I can do 183 00:50:48.720 --> 00:51:20.410 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: to do. Okay. Christy says, are there any differences between using pro writing aids in the software platform versus what comes up in word. Yes, Christy, there are a lot. So word is really focused on just grammar and spelling for writing aid goes way way beyond that. So you'll get grammar and spelling. But then you'll also get sticky sentences. Passive voice repeats overused words. Basically, all of these things that are not technically incorrect, but can make your writing much more advanced. So it against. It covers all the basics that word has, and then goes up there from from there. 184 00:51:22.960 --> 00:51:33.960 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Alright! Oh, can I, demo where to find the genres? Let me just pull that up quickly. Oh, here's my screen. 185 00:51:37.900 --> 00:51:54.400 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: alright in the sidebar. You should have this goal Sidebar. You can click this arrow to collapse it, and then you can drop down and change your writing style. Here. You can also come to settings in the top and then select your document type from here as well. So either of those places will help you find your genre 186 00:52:00.120 --> 00:52:13.839 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: alright, someone says is providing it a completely free paid, or partially or fully, it is free but free up to 500 words. So if you want to work on more than 500 words. Then you have to upgrade. It's the easiest way to think about it. 187 00:52:14.650 --> 00:52:36.849 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: What's considered an overused word. How many times so overused, is not overused within. Your document overused is overused versus like how the world thinks about overused. So words like very are overused within our count. If you want to see words that you individually have overused, then you want to look at things like your 188 00:52:36.900 --> 00:52:44.360 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: The repeats and echoes report. The repeats and echoes report will help you find how many instances you have individually used a particular word 189 00:52:47.430 --> 00:52:57.139 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: alright. How does pro writing and handle inter internal thought. Distinction. Does it recognize italics or single quotes right now it's just recognizing double quotes 190 00:53:00.930 --> 00:53:11.820 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Gregory. If you're not seeing rephrase, send an email to hello@priting.com, and they should be able to find it. And just for anybody who is interested I will drop the pricing link again. 191 00:53:12.980 --> 00:53:27.419 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Joanna, starting with Jaren's is not usually pass. It depends on again. It's gonna depend on the sentence. If if that's something that you want to change. But our sentence starts reports will help you to have a look at that and see if that's something that you need to address. If there's too many. 192 00:53:29.890 --> 00:53:58.450 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Inca says, Okay, if you're writing genre fiction, is there a good Is there a good reason to make the readability higher? Is an accessibility more important than the author, feeling like the cleverest person in the room. This is such a good question. And again I we were kind of talking about it in the chat earlier. It really depends on so many things depends on what you're writing. It depends on who you're writing for, and it ultimately just depends on you as the author at the end of the day, as the writer, you have creative control over what you want to put out there. So 193 00:53:58.450 --> 00:54:23.430 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: if you want to put out a story that is very, very true to who you like, how you want to tell it. Yeah, you could. You should put. You can have the readability that you want. You have the creative control over that again, as you are trying to publish for more people, you're likely going to have to bring your readability a bit. A bit lower again. For, as Inca says, this kind of concept of accessibility, but this is really a philosophical question where there isn't a right 194 00:54:23.430 --> 00:54:37.380 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: or wrong answer, again, that's why the clarity is something that I find so interesting because it's not right or wrong. You might get people with very, very strong opinions to that. But ultimately it's going to depend on on your 195 00:54:37.510 --> 00:54:40.669 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: who you're writing for, and what you're trying to do with that writing. 196 00:54:43.100 --> 00:55:04.000 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay, Rava says, which one is better. The life yearly or lifetime plan for a heavy user who uses this tool for various jobs. They're the same plan. It just depends how you want to pay. So you'll get exactly the same features on yearly versus lifetime. It just depends if you want to try it out for a lower price right now. Or if you're ready to commit and get that kind of lifetime price and go for there. 197 00:55:04.540 --> 00:55:22.270 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay, what is a sticky sentence? So a sticky sentence is a sentence that has over 40% glue words in it. So 40, yeah, 40% glue words, a sentence that has too many of those words that you can reduce, remove, or replace to to change 198 00:55:22.860 --> 00:55:35.459 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: is 500 words per day for the free. It's 500 words per document, or 500 words that checking at one time. And yes, Darryl. There's a couple of places that you can put repeated words. I'll show you quickly 199 00:55:36.090 --> 00:55:52.940 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: before we run out of time. So the repeats and echoes check first goes through the repeats will find all of your frequent 4, 3, 2 word phrases which are really helpful to see if you've just gotten a word stuck in your head, and you are trying to use it over and over and over again. 200 00:55:53.280 --> 00:55:59.120 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: and then you can also come in here and edit your style guide. 201 00:56:00.440 --> 00:56:09.929 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: to look more for things like, Oh, I want to avoid particular types of words and make it a bit more a bit more common to you, and then you can also customize 202 00:56:10.200 --> 00:56:21.879 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: your reports that way as well. So you could also add, you know, more information here. If you come into the combo report, and things like that, too. And then the sticky sentence, the sticky sentence is. 203 00:56:21.880 --> 00:56:46.070 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: it's not something that a a sticky sentence is not used for a particular thing. A sticky sentence is a type of sentence that's probably too hard for your reader to understand. So if you have sticky sentences, these are sentences that you're likely going to want to make shorter and clearer, because they're probably too long and complicated for your reader. So it's a good way of understanding. You know what sentence is too long. What sentence? Again, will my reader not want to see? 204 00:56:48.200 --> 00:57:16.279 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay, let's see how successful is providing eightx correcting dialog tags. So let's go to the dialog report. The dialog report identifies all of the dialog tags in your writing. Then it also finds unusual dialog tags, so tags that are not said or asked, and then it also finds places where you use. Use. You have used a dialog tag with an adverb. Then you can either rephrase the sentence, using the rephrase feature or you can edit it yourself 205 00:57:17.690 --> 00:57:21.539 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: and the genre option again. I'm in the real time checker. 206 00:57:22.130 --> 00:57:32.129 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: I can come here to the goals panel and then collect my dropdown for what genre I want, or the settings up here at the top and select my document type from there as well. 207 00:57:34.650 --> 00:57:52.870 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay, I think that has covered most of the chats. Again. I'm just dropping the link to take advantage of the 40% off yearly. It's genuinely very helpful for us if you're interested in upgrading to provide aid to do it via this link because it helps me go back to the company and say, 208 00:57:52.870 --> 00:58:17.700 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: say that, you know. Look out all these people who came to Sci-fi week. They enjoyed the presentation. They like the tool, and they're interested in trying it out. So I would really, really encourage you if you're trying to. If you're thinking about upgrading again, using this link this week really helps make that case. And then we're also going to be sending around a survey to ask about your time this week. It's really really helpful for us. If you fill out that survey, tell us what you loved about this session again, so that we can keep bringing these weeks to you for free 209 00:58:17.990 --> 00:58:31.880 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: and thank you all so much for showing up for participating. It's oh, and before I go I've meant to show the hub so if you are looking for where to find the replays, let me just put that into the chat. 210 00:58:35.400 --> 00:58:37.030 All rights. 211 00:58:38.220 --> 00:58:43.910 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So that is the link to the hub in the chat, and then if you scroll all the way down, the replays are here. 212 00:58:44.120 --> 00:58:54.720 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: and then you can just switch the day by clicking up here. So all of the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, sessions are all here, and then we actually have also added this, the transcripts for all of the sessions as well. 213 00:58:56.430 --> 00:59:14.969 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Alright! Well, thank you all again so much. This has been lovely. It's been so great to see all of you. The slides are also all added there. If there are not slides, because the presenter has not given us access to the slides, so slides and transcripts and session replays are all up there. Sometimes we won't have slides just because the presenter doesn't share them, but if they do, they're up there. 214 00:59:15.290 --> 00:59:22.900 Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Great. Thank you all so much. I hope you have a great rest of your day and a great rest of your sci-fi week hopefully see you at the next one bye, everyone.