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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Alright. Hello, everybody! Welcome to day! 3 of crime writers week. I hope you are all having a good day so far, I'm actually gonna take my headphones off because I am the only panelist today. So I only have to hear myself.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: anyway, to make sure everything is working. If you can see and hear me. Can you drop your name in the chat and and

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: what you had for breakfast today? I will start. My name is Hayley. I'm from providing aid. And I had. What did I have? Breakfast? I had

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: toast. My partner made fresh bread, so I had some fresh bread with toast.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Ef had corn flakes.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Bonnie had coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: keto, coffee.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: lots of coffee, ham, and cheese. Oh, Osiago bagel

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: sounds delicious nothing yet, I guess. Yeah, I'm in the Uk, so it's a bit later in the day. So some of the people coming to us from other time zones are probably still fueling eggs, oatmeal.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: artichoke carts, delicious fried eggs, and English muffins.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Hmm. Dinner with egg, fried rice sounds, great

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: lots of coffees. I just had a diet Coke for my lunch.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Great! Well, it seems like everything is working, and I'm going to run through a couple bits of housekeeping before we start our session today. It is so great to see all of you here.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So, as I mentioned just a couple bits of housekeeping, if this is your 1st time joining for us. Or if you just have any questions. So today, we are going to be talking about how to edit your crime novel using technology. Now, if you would like to access the replay for this session or any other session, you can do so on the crime writers. Week Hub. Those are added as soon as the recordings are done processing by zoom, and the time for this can vary a little bit. Sometimes it takes a few hours for them to process by zoom and by Youtube.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: And so if you don't see a particular recording there, don't worry. We will add it as soon as that is done processing, and then we also add slides as soon as we get them from any of the presenters who give us permission. And so, if you don't see some slides up there, it's either because we haven't gotten them yet, or we just don't have permission from the presenter. And but all of those replays and slides are added to the hub, usually again within the next 12 to 24 h. As soon as that processing

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: is done, and those replays will be up on the Hub until June the 28, th at which point they will be available for everybody in the providing aid community.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Now the sessions this week today, and tomorrow's sessions are free for absolutely everybody to attend. But we have some really great sessions coming up on Friday that are limited to pro writing, aid, premium and premium pro members. So if you have a paid subscription of pro writing aid that is included in your subscription fee.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: and if you are a free user right now, or you've just signed up for this event, you can upgrade your account by Friday morning to gain access. We send everyone with a paid subscription in email on Friday morning, with the details for attending live those live sessions and viewing the replays. It's a different link. So just keep an eye peeled on your email for those links. And if you haven't received it, you should can send an email to hello@prowritingate.com, and they'll take care of that as soon as possible.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay, and then again, if you are a free user right now we do have an upgrade offer. So if you would like to join program writing aid, get access to those Friday sessions and then have access to the program as well. We're offering 50, 15% off yearly premium or premium pro when you upgrade, you unlock advanced tools for authors. So advanced style suggestions, author comparisons, full integrations for Scribner, word, etc.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: We give you the opportunity to improve entire chapters. So, looking at genre specific reports with unlimited word counts. I'll show you more about what that is today. And then you can also kind of curate your editing experience by creating snippets, dictionaries, custom roles everything that you want to have kind of your exact experience within providing aid. And you can get 15% off using the code. Cw, 2024.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: There's more details on the crime writers we cover as well about this.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: And then finally, if you want to keep talking about crime writing, please feel free to join our community. You can keep up to date with, you know what's going on during this event and everything else for the you know, for this event and future events. In the community. The link to that is on the hub or below. It's just community dot writing aid.com.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay? And then finally, a couple of reminders for this session. If you have questions for me, our speaker, please use the QA. Box that will help me keep track of everything, since I'm here by myself today. And if you'd like to chat with other participants, please feel free to use the chat. And then again, links to everything are on the crime. Readers wake Hub

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: alright with all of that being said. I think that we are ready to begin. So Hello! To those of you who I have not met before. My name is Hayley. I am the director of community here at pro writing aid which means that my job is to manage the team that puts together these amazing events. So I really have the best job in the world. I have an amazing team that I work with and our job is to just talk about pro writing aid to everyone in the world, and to put together

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: together free resources and free events for writers like crime writers, week like Sci-fi week, which will come up next like fantasy week which we just finished.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: and really just to bring amazing, amazing opportunities for writers. So I'm very, very lucky. I have the best job in the world.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: And I am here today to talk to you about how you can edit your way to a thrilling crime writing crime, novel using technology.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So let's go ahead and dive in and thank you, Lou, so good to see you. So today we're gonna talk a little bit about what editing is and what editing isn't. We're also going to talk about how technology can assist the editing process. And then I'm going to talk to you specifically about how to use technology for story scene and page level edits. So let's go ahead and dive in. We've got a lot to cover and as a reminder, please use the QA. Button

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: if you have any questions.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So let's 1st start by talking about understanding editing. So what is editing? In the 1st place? I think all of us know that we have to edit at some point in our process. But the

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: kind of what is editing and what isn't editing can be really confusing for some people, so I define editing as the process of revising your manuscript to improve upon it. Editing includes everything from moving entire scenes. So you may decide that you want to keep one scene. But it's actually happening too early in your text. So you might just pick that scene up and move it into later in your plot.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: You might delete or add text when you're editing. So you might decide, for instance, that an entire character. A side character is completely useless, and their subplot doesn't really make sense. So during the editing process, you might decide to just totally remove that or during the editing process, you might decide. You know what

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: I have not included enough red herrings in my crime novel. I'm not creating enough suspense for my readers. So I want to add some more into the text. So you could do that during editing as well. You can also, during editing, look, zoom in much, much more, and look at individual sentences and say, You know what this sentence?

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: It's saying the right thing, but not in the right way. So I want to go with through and think about how I can edit the sentence to say what I mean more clearly or more effectively. So editing starts at this very, very big kind of macro level from thinking about how your writing is as a whole, but then it also zooms in very, very closely to look at each individual sentence and word choice as well. All of that kind of revision, and all of that working with your existing text is under editing.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: When you're editing, you may also decide to start from scratch at this point. So when you're editing, you may look at manipulating your existing text to add, delete change in some way, but you can also look at your text and decide that you might want to start from scratch, so as part of the editing process, you might look at a scene and decide. This whole scene isn't working. It's not doing what I need it to do, so you might decide to start from scratch, completely rewriting or restructuring that scene.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: You could also do that at the chapter level, so you might decide to start from scratch on a whole chapter which might include several scenes, and decide to start from scratch and kind of

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: revise and and and direct, go back to drafting at that point or during the editing process, you might UN, you might come to the conclusion that your entire novel needs to start from scratch has anyone in the chat ever done that where they've had an idea? And they think you know what? I've got a really great idea. But I just have not done done it justice. I need to start from scratch. I'm curious if anyone in the chat has ever done that before.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: but you might decide that you're oh, yes, we've got lots of people. Yes.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: hell, yes, sorry. Not sorry exactly. Patricia. Sandra's there right now. Yes, okay, so it sounds like a lot of people. In the editing process. Get to the point where they actually have a completed draft and say, you know what? This isn't right. I'm going to actually just start from scratch and do it from there. As Kara Kara or Kara says, who hasn't so editing can be all of those things. So it can be, you know, looking and scrambling and revising what you already have, or can be taking something and deciding this is not good enough.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: To begin with, I need to start from scratch and go from there. And again, that can happen at a scene level, and it can happen even at the full novel.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Now, when you're in this editing process, you really have to take yourself out of the mindset of the reader, excuse me, the writer, and put yourself into the mindset of the reader. The editing process is really all about kind of putting on your reader shoes, so to speak, and looking at your manuscript, and trying to understand how someone else who is not as intimately familiar with your book and your story as you are.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: will enjoy and understand it. So this, the editing process, is really about trying to create some distance between you and your manuscript, so you can put yourself in the shoes of a 3rd party who will pick up this book and hopefully enjoy

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: and comprehend what you're trying to say. So when you're getting into the editing mindset. You really want to separate yourself from the writer of this book you want to think about. How can I best tell the story, so that the reader understands my meaning, and in a lot of ways you kind of have to come into editing with fresh eyes that don't have all of the knowledge that you have built up from and from drafting and working on your revision.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: to try to understand the book as a whole by itself. So when you're getting into the editing mind and set, you need to really think about it as a reader. And the other thing I want to think about as the with the editing process is that it is just that it is a process for many, many people. The editing process lasts a lot longer than the drafting process during this time. It's very, very easy

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: to just keep working at something and to keep thinking about how you can make something better.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: for many, many people. It's a very, very clear cut when to start and stop drafting. You start when there's nothing on the page, and you end when you hit the end right. That kind of drafting process is fairly straightforward. Editing, on the other hand, is tinkering. It's a lot of looking at your manuscript, and thinking, you know.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: will this resonate with readers? There is always going to be something more that you can do. And again, you need to kind of come into editing, thinking that it's going to be a process at a long haul. But you need to make sure that you do not get stuck in perfectionism.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So one of the things to keep in mind as you're editing is that you need to maintain your momentum. Editing is a long and difficult process, with many, many steps which we'll go into in a second. But you also need to maintain momentum in order to effectively edit. You're going to have to put aside your inner perfectionist, and even some of your outside critics, whether that's beta readers, critique partners, etc.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: to make sure that you're moving forward, and that is because every single novel can still be edited even once it's published. So I have a an, except from the hunger games here. That. I've just put into pro writing aid, which we'll talk a little bit more in a second, and you can see this is just the pro to pro writing Aids. Real time report. This is the publish novel that obviously has been published.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: You know, millions and millions of copies around the world, best selling movies, etc. And you can see that even in this novel.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: there are suggestions. This is the point of this is that editing is not a goal that you're getting to where you're trying to get to 100 you are never going to score 100% on your manuscript. You are never going to have a perfect novel, because reading and writing are subjective. What's a good story to one person is a good is not a good story to another person. So it's really, really important.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: to think about. You know, how can you get this to the level where you are as as happy with it as you would like to be. And so there's a really solid balance within editing of trying to make sure you're maintaining momentum, moving through the process, correcting what needs to be corrected, but also putting aside that inner perfectionist, because otherwise you'll just never get to a point where you're published.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay, so

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: yeah, diving a little bit deeper into that editing process. Let's look at what we kind of

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: go through when I'm talking about the editing process. So today, I'm going to talk about 3 levels of edits that make up the editing process. We're gonna talk about story level scene, level and page level edits. Now, for the purposes of this presentation, story, level and scene level edits make up a lot of your developmental or story edits. So this is the macro level of your story, looking at setting plot.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: character story, arc, etc. Which we're going to talk about in just a second, I'll go into more detail about each of those, and then page level edits are really where you're doing that. Look at kind of your sentence level. How am I using sentences? What are my word choices? How can I make my individual sentences and individual pages sound better? Now I want to set this expectation that a strong editing process should have all 3 of these

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: parts. You should definitely be looking at your manuscript to evaluate it at the story level. You need to be looking at your manuscript to evaluate it at the scene level, and you need to be looking at your manuscript to evaluate it at the page or sentence by sentence level.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Now I set this expectation to highlight a few things first, st again, editing is a process. It is something that is going to take a long time. And you might move through each of these phases in succession, or you might move through them multiple multiple times again. What that process is going to look like is different for every single person. But it is a long and lengthy process, and you need to go through these in separate stages. Now, again.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: separate stages. You need to think about these in 3 different 3 different stages, because they are 3 very different jobs. This means that you're going to be reading through your manuscript at least 3 times with 3 different things. 3 different kind of focus areas as you go through. So the 1st time you'll be going through thinking about the story the second time you might be going through thinking about the scene the 3rd time you might be going through thinking about each of your

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: individual pages. Now, that would be just one very, very basic editing process for many people. They go through many rounds of story level edits, many rounds of scene level edits, and many, many, many rounds of page level edits. But you need to make sure that you're going through your your draft, at least through each of these stages. Once before you kind of move to the next part of your process. When you do that, you're making your story much much stronger. And again, you're taking yourself

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: out of that kind of writer mindset, and you're putting yourself into that reader mindset, so that you can make sure your audience whether that is audience, that you're

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: that you're publishing to whether that is a critique partner that you're giving the story to, whether that's a traditional publisher that you're trying to pitch. They are getting the best version of your story possible. So again, we want to set the expectation that this is a process that there are multiple phases, and that you need to go through them in successive order. We'll talk more in just a second about what happens in each of these phases of the editing process. But again, I do wanna highlight that they are

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: 3 distinct pieces of the process. You can also break these up by asking for feedback in between each each part of the process. So that way you get external support and validation on your work

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: before you kind of move on to the next phase.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So this is the editing process again. First, st we're looking at our kind of high level developmental and story edits, then we finally move into the page.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Now let's talk a little bit about why technology can assist with editing and how it's so important. And why, I think, actually using technology to assist with editing makes you a much effective edit more effective editor. So if we kind of go back to this idea of editing process, as we see, there are multiple levels of edits that you'll need to complete

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: now for most of us we are not going to be very good ourselves at completing all of these levels of edits without external support. So some of us might just not be very good at grammar, or might really struggle with spelling, but be really really great at plot, story and world. Some of us might, you know, be great at developing a really really strong world, but struggle to make that effective at the scene level.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So it is not expected for you, as a writer, to be strong at all of this without support. For many writers, you know, from all time that support comes in the form of an editor. Whether that's a human editor or a piece of technology. The great thing about having technology available now is that technology allows you to have kind of a constant editor that's much more cost effective

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: there to support you through this process, you can still bring in a human editor to support you through each of the phases. But using technology creates kind of inexhaustible resource that you can access to do all 3 levels of edits

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: as you're writing.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So editing is a long and complicated process, as I've mentioned often, it can be really difficult to get distance from your story to objectively evaluate it. I saw a couple of people in the chat mentioning that they do kind of text to speech. They have some people read aloud, which gives you that kind of distance you need. But there's a lot of.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: you know getting that distance from your story to be able to objectively evaluate it as a reader is very, very difficult. And that's where technology can come in technology just like the kind of text to voice readers that people are mentioning can help do everything from create that distance by creating a 3rd party to read your book for you. It can also help you speed up the process because it can find errors for you very quickly.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: It can also identify errors that will be really, really difficult for you as a human to spot. For example.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: one of the things that you want to avoid doing within your writing is repeating yourself. You might get into your head a a certain character description that you use throughout your manuscript. It can be very, very difficult to to find to manually find how many times you've used a certain word or phrase throughout your manuscript. However, technology G can do that with just the click of a button, so it can find those errors that humans cannot spot, and it can do it in seconds. In a way that's much, much easier than for you to kind of do that manually.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: or to employ a human human editor to do it.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Technology can also help by giving you inexhaustible feedback. So technology is always there. It is always available. It's customizable to what you need, and it's not going to get tired like a beta reader or critique partner, and it's not going to be extremely expensive, like a human editor. So as you're working through your drafts as you're working through each phase of the editing process, technology is there, and it can help support you and make sure that you are on the right track.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: or give you suggestions for what you should be doing again in a way that is faster than Beta readers or critique partners who are often working for free or who might not be specialists in your genre. If you're using friends or family. So it can give you kind of that targeted feedback you need with a touch of a button. And then, whilst human editors, a lot of times are specialists in the genre, and can give you a lot of this feedback. They are expensive.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: and you know, not always easily available as well, you're often waiting a long time to get human editor feedback back and then again, depending on your budget, you'd might just simply not have the budget to be able to use to be to use a human editor editor inexhaustibly. So technology is there to support you in that way

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: now, before we get into how technology can support you on on editing your your crime novel, I wanna talk about how using technology as a spectrum.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Now, one of the things that has come up in the last year or so since the advent of Chat Gpt is the use of generative AI for both writing and editing. Now, this is something that as we talk about technology, a lot of people get really, really nervous about and so what I want to highlight. Here is that using technology is a spectrum.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: You can edit completely without technology, you can edit with technology. And then, even if you choose to edit with technology, you can be somewhere on the spectrum from using no generative AI at all to using all generative AI so no generative AI could look like just running reports to identify the repeats in your document

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: using generative AI, on the other hand, could look like having AI completely rewrite a scene for you that you do not think is effective. I'm not saying one is better than than the other. I'm so. What I am saying is that using technology enables you to do one or the other, or both, depending on what you are comfortable with, and what your goals as a writer and an editor are. So using technology does not have to mean using generative AI.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: It also does not have to mean you don't use gender. AI. It is a spectrum, and almost all of us will fall somewhere along the spectrum, depending on what we are comfortable with.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: But I do want to start out with that because a lot of people tend to get nervous about generative AI

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: and the use of technology. So I want to start off by saying that using technology does not mean that you have to use generative AI it to to rewrite any part of your novel. If you don't want to.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay, let's dive into how technology can now support on each of the phases of the writing process.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So the 1st one we're going to talk about are story level edits. So story level edits are the 1st step in your editing process at the story level you are only focusing on the story which includes plot, structure, character, development, and worlds building.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: During this part of the process you are asking yourself questions like, does my story have enough conflict, you know, is the conflict

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: powering the story. Is it enough to kind of keep people interested in what's happening you'll also be asking yourself questions like, is my story believable? You know, is this a realistic thing that can happen? You might be asking, are my side characters memorable? Oftentimes in crime novels? We'll have side characters who serve as red herrings or who interact with our different character. You know our main sleuth or our main villain. We want to make sure they are memorable, and adding to the story.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: you'll also often have side plots in the story. So, for instance, if you have a sleuth character, you might have them have a drinking problem or problems at home, or they might be struggling to pay for university for one of their children, or something like that. Those are all things that can flesh out the character. But at the story level you want to make sure that if they are getting paid significant page time

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: they're serving the story and propelling it forward. So at the story level you might be looking and seeing. Are some of these character details necessary for the story, or are they actually detracting from it? Likewise you're looking at your characters and seeing, are they having clear development? Do they have believable motivations throughout the story. Is it clear why the person who has committed the crime has committed the crime is there, you know, realistic reasoning there.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: and you also want to be looking at your world and thinking. Is it immersive? Are people coming into the world of my story, and feeling like it is fleshed out and like they have disappeared into that world.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So at this story level, at this highest level part of the process, you're looking at these very, very big picture pieces. So you're asking yourself those questions instead of actually kind of looking on an individual page level. And we'll talk about that in a second.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So here's kind of an example of what an initial story level edit might look like for crime. So we have a plot summary here of a detective who's called to investigate the murder of a wealthy businessman. It's going to lead her through a series of twists and turns discovering the business men's shady dealings. You know, he's got a primary. We've got a prime suspect in his partner. She's discovering that he's having a an affair with a secretary. You know, and at the end we discover that the business partner committed the murder out of greed and jealousy. So that's kind of a high level example for that

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: story.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: If you're doing story level edits, you might decide that actually, that prime suspect

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: is not really that interesting maybe that that prime suspect is too obvious. And so what we need to do at the story level is introduce things like adding red herrings or subplots.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: For instance, maybe the character has a estranged daughter who recently reconnected with him. We want to throw them in there as a suspect, because that then creates more mystery for the readers. So you might decide again at that story level edit, that the villain is too obvious. You need to introduce some additional subplots or additional characters to again create more intrigue for your readers, or, on the other hand, you might decide you have too many distracting

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: subplots, too many red herrings, or too many side characters. So you want to slim those down to focus on focus on the ones that matter. So that could be something that you do for the story level. You might want to add layers into the character. So we had this murdered character before. It was kind of a cartoon, you know, a cartoon murder victim. And this we might decide that we want to add layers to that character. You know

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: a history of blackmail or a history of of struggle with kind, of other care, of conflict with other characters, which then again adds layers of complexity, and makes that character less of a 2 dimensional a 2 dimensional view for your readers. You might decide that you want to add red herrings as well. So you might decide. You know what it's we've gotten to the end too quickly. It's too easy to see. So I'm going to introduce a red herring with the secretary, who's not only having an affair, but they're also investigating illegal activities.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So you know, she's maybe having an affair with him because she's a journalist as well. So again, you're coming in. And you're thinking, what can I do to make this story more compelling as a reader? What can I do to make sure that this is something that I do not want to put down. And again at the that kind of macro level at the story level you're thinking, what can I insert, or what can I remove? What can I insert to create more complexity if we feel like we're lacking

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: complexity of plot, character setting, etc? Or what can I remove if this is simply too much to keep track of? There's always that kind of fine line between making sure there's enough complexity to keep people guessing, but not so much that it becomes convoluted and too exhausting to try to figure out

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: so that's an example of what you might do for story level edits for a crime novel.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Now, just to hammer home a little bit. The difference between story level and other types of edits. Story. Level edits are things like deciding. An entire character needs to be cut or added from the story. So you might decide to go through and just completely extricate that character from your story. You might decide at the story level that you're missing a plot point or beat so maybe you have never had the detective make a false accusation or something like that.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: You might decide that you want to add that in

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: you might decide at the story level that you have an ineffective climax. So perhaps there's a final confrontation. But it's just not effective. It's not giving the attention you want. So you decide to re, to rework that. So that's kind of story level.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: not story level. On the other hand, are things like a description of a new setting in a scene. So say your characters end up at a hospital. And you're describing the scene of the hospital whilst that is a bit of world building. That is something that you're actually going to look at more at the scene level. So we're not going to get into the kind of nitty gritty of

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: each individual scene just yet. We're going to think about world on the macro level. So is the world clear at a high level? Can I feel the kind of place they're in. And then at the scene level, we'll go into and look in each different scene and see if that's effective at that point. So I just wanna make clear that kind of nuance that at the story level you're looking macro to see to see if the world is realistic and consistent. And then at the scene level

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: you're seeing. Are your descriptions doing a good job of building that world? So it's like story level? Is the world. Good scene level is the scene living up to the you know, the strength of the world that I've built.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: You'll also not be doing anything about overly wordy sentences at the story level. We'll get to that way later at the page level, and you wouldn't be doing anything about. You know, this dialogue feels boring or things like that. More of that's going to come at the scene in the page level as well.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So story level is really really high you're really thinking about. You know the effectiveness of the plot, the effectiveness of your characters, your subplots, and your world as well.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So, to complete story level edits. You want to approach your manuscript like a reader. And one of the ways you can do this using technology is exactly as people in the chat have said, which is to use a text to voice dictation, app that can help you. You know.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Read your story as if someone rewrote it. When you listen to it. You're going to hear different things. You're going to zoom kind of zone out of it in different places, and it's going to really tell you whether or not you can kind of keep the pace up and understand what it's like.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So you're going to want to approach your manuscript like a reader and a new one at that. To do this I recommend setting your story aside so taking a break, so that you've forgotten some of the pieces in it. And then you want to read your story like a reader again, you'll want to use technologies to support this using technology to do voice to text and to read it to you is a really great way. You can also, you know, download it to your kindle or some type of other E-reader to really approach it. As a reader.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: I recommend doing this, so, approaching it as a reader in, you know, just simple ebook form or Pdf form.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: because that will help you not make edits during the story level process. You want to make sure you are not editing at all until the end. What you do want to do, on the other hand, is capture ideas in a notebook or using technology. You know, in a a document of some kind. What you're going to want to do at this point is capture notes on what is working and what is not working for you. You're going to have to resist the impulse to go in and make the changes until at the very end. But you want to kind of complete your book.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: capture your ideas of what's working and what's not working for plot story setting world, and then come back later to create, to create those changes. And again, you can utilize technology to support your process. I highly recommend using dictation apps to capture I ideas or notes. So if you're reading one of the things I like to do is use dragon dictation or use my voice memos on my phone to just take notes on what's working and what's not.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: And then, again, another thing I like to do to create separation from my document is to create, you know, a very, very simple Pdf

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: version of my document, so that I can read it like a book without spending much time on formatting, and then also using dictation apps to read it to myself as well. So again, I'm creating that distance, and I'm really approaching it like a reader. So I can think about those macro pieces without having the attemptation to go in and edit until the end.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay, so that is at the story level. Now let's go into the scene level. So the scene level is where we start to zoom in a little bit closer, and we begin this after we are happy with our story level edits. So once we are satisfied with our plot with our characters, with our world. What we're now going to go into is zoom in and look at each individual scene.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: for its key scene beats the pacing of each scene, and then additional engagement opportunities that we can add to make sure the scene is more effective. Now, when we look at the scene level. We are going to look for all of these different pieces in each and every single scene. So we want to make sure we are making every scene have

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: key scene beats around conflict. We're going to want to make sure each seen as pacing. And then we're also going to want to make sure that we have made the most of engagement opportunities for

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: for our readers. So some of the questions you'll want to ask yourself for this part are, do my scenes start in the right place? Oftentimes you might have the right scene, but it starts a little bit too early or a little bit too late. You want to make sure that it's starting in exactly the place where the action is beginning. You're also going to want to make sure your scenes have tension. They should be there, and they should be moving the plot forward for a reason.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So there should be conflict in each and every one of your scenes. Obviously some scenes will have much more significant conflict, like a climax where the 2 characters are. You know, going head to head, is going to have much more conflict than you know. A a weary detective returning at the home at the end of the day and facing their, you know, disaffected teen. But there should be conflict in every one of those scenes that's again moving the platform and developing your characters

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: again. You also want to make sure your scenes are well paced. So we'll look at ways technology can support with that. But you want to make sure the scenes are not dragging too much. You know, in places where you're going through dialogue or action, or you also wanna make sure that there are places where you're slowing down a little bit more to give back story. So you need to make sure that that pace is even.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: And then you also want to make sure that each of your scenes has a key goal. And again, that conflict that's that's really determining why it's there.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So scene, level edits are where you look at things like? Is my dialogue exciting? Is it, Pacey? Throughout the scene? Is it moving this forward? You're also going to look at how the action within the scene is progressing. So are things happening in the scene in the right order. Are they happening in a way that's creating tension? You might want to also make look at whether your descriptions make sense. So have I done a good job describing the hospital the detective is going to? Or have I done too much or too little of that.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: You're not at this point going to look at things like, are my sentences overly wordy again? We'll get to that at the page level edit. You're not going to look at this this stage as to whether or not your character is effective for the plot, because ideally, we've already decided that at the story level you're also going to not look at things like, Am I missing a story beat at the scene level, because, again, you have in theory already addressed.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: story beats or characters at the story level you have added or removed those scenes, or added or removed those characters, if you need to. So now we're really zooming in and looking at a single scene by itself.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Now, I'm recommending completing edits at the stage, at the scene level rather than the chapter level, because scenes are the real building blocks of a story. This is what's going to contain. Individual beats. Chapters often contain multiple scenes, or only part of a single scene that might cut off in the middle of the chapter. And they're more like, you know, start and end places for readers rather than the true kind of building blocks of the story.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So I'm recommending at this stage that we look at the individual scene, level the start and stop of each scene, and that rather than at the chapter level.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay, so let's look at an example of how this might happen in your in a scene level edit. So we've got some original dialogue here on the left, all of which is is fine. We have the main character asking the the murder. Suspect so, Mr. Evans, we have evidence that you are at the crime scene of the crime. On the night James Caldwell was murdered. Can you explain why you were there?

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: I told you, Mark replied. etc. I had a meeting with them. Then they go back and forth. Now at a scene level edit. What I might think at this point is that you know what this is not creating enough tension.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: All of these sentences are kind of the same length. You know, they're they're really kind of going back and forth. I'm I'm having to use the dialog tag frustratedly to explain. You know that Mark is really upset, and and to to show that he's kind of being short. And again, the the pacing is kind of. It's just very the same here. It's very over and over. So what a decision I might make

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: is to cut down what they're saying, you know this becomes we have evidence that you were the crime scene comes. We know you were at Mr. Caldwell's the night you he was murdered. Why were you there? This maybe creates a vision that the detective is much more confident or much more aggressive than they were in this 1st vision version, where they were a little bit polite. So the scene level edit is giving me an opportunity to improve the pace and add a little bit more of that

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: characterization into the dialogue. Same thing. Here we have Mark, who's saying it was a business meeting we talked. I left, even though we don't have frustratedly here. It's very clear that Mark is not cooperating with the detectives, because he's giving very, very short, specific answers. So we really have the opportunity at this kind of scene level to go through and say, You know what the the main points of the scene were effective. But I want to create a

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: a a character that is, you know, more confident. So I need to imbue this dialogue with a bit more confidence, or I want to show the conflict between them. So I'm going to make you know the dialogue. A much, much punchier, right? So that's the type of thing that you're looking at at this stage.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay, so now let's talk a little bit about how technology can assist. And I'm going to come into pro writing aid because I think that pro writing aid is really helpful for both scene and page level edits

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: so the 1st thing that I'm going to do with providing aid is use something called the Critique Report, which takes a second to run. So I'm just going to talk a little bit about it while we go through this.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So, as I mentioned before, scene level edits are things where you are looking at a character's moat, you know. Conflict and tension throughout the scene. You're looking at the scenes, starting and ending points you're looking through, you know. Is it moving the the story forward? What is my setting.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So I have run this on a crime novel that IA draft of a crime novel. What we've got here is a critique report that gives you some information on all of those pieces. So at the scene level it looks, and it tells you that we've got an engaging opening. So it's starting at the right place. It's telling me that we're opening with a vivid atmospheric description. It tells me that we're doing a good job of building tension throughout the scene.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: and that we've got some really strew, you know, strew smooth transitions between the scenes and the characters. We also talk here we can see a little bit about the characters. I can see here that you know her motivations are not fully explored, but we can see that she's determined and driven to find the truth. So this is telling me, you know, are the points that I'm trying to get across

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: the right ones. We can also see here that

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: the the report wrecks

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: states that the tension is arising around Emily's disappearance. We've got this kind of ominous atmosphere, and so I can see here is this, my intention? Is this attention that I wanted to create? And then we can see. Is that tension effectively building or maintaining suspense? Or are there opportunities for improving it? So then it also highlights a couple of opportunities for improving this. So this particular scene does not have really any dialogue.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So it's recommending, incorporating more so that we can add depth and reveal more about their personalities without that kind of backstory. We're also creating

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: opportunities to to, you know, tighten the pacing, beginning at the beginning. So it's saying that we've you know we've got an immersive world, but maybe it's taking a little bit too long to get there. So it's really giving those kind of potential improvements that can make the make the scene stronger. So that's a critique report which really kind of gives you a a summary of the scene as it works. Now it gives you this option at the scene level.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: to understand again how this scene is effective. Now, what I can do is take that report and go in and make this make these changes myself. So I ran that by hitting this critique report button right up here.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Now, that's the critique report. It gets really, really good for a strong overview. Now I can also come in here and look at things like the pacing report. So I'm going to go to more reports and then hit pacing. And what pacing does is, find me slower paced paragraphs throughout the document. So I can actually see that this scene has a real lot of slower paced paragraphs in it, particularly at the beginning. Now that is not necessarily bad or good, but what it does do is give me that kind of visual of is this

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: pacing the way I want it to be so if I'm getting to the climax of my novel, I probably don't want very many slow paced paragraphs, so if I saw this many slow paced paragraphs at at the climax I might decide. I need to remove those or change those in some way. This, however, is the beginning. So I might decide that that's okay.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: You can also look at pasting by looking at things like the sentence length report which gives you a visualization of the lengths of all of your sentences. I can see in here that I kind of have some quickly paste sentences that are a bit shorter, whereas then again, here, up at the beginning I have a lot of long sentences right in a row again. That's not that's not bad or good. It's up to you to determine whether or not

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: that pacing is what suits your purpose for that particular scene. So this is technology coming in here and supporting again what you need, or to kind of give you that information that would be very, very difficult to ascertain, as just a human

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: editing your own work to understand where you are.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: And then another thing I can use is the sensory report which I'm coming to by more reports, and then sensory, which comes in and looks at my ratio of sense words. So I can see I have used 3 of the 5 senses. So sites touch sound. I have not used smell or taste at all, so this potentially gives me opportunities to improve the immersiveness of my setting in my and my description by adding more sentences in here. So again, you can see that all of this

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: all of this is technology giving me more information about my pacing about the success of my characters about the success of my plot without using any generative AI to to support rewriting it. So I can just basically use this information, and then again, go from there, or what I can do is I can highlight. I can come to the real time

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: editor, and then, if I want to use generative AI, I can use something like sparks to

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: continue writing. I can use sparks to add some action to add some sensory detail. To add a joke if I wanted something funny to add more dialogue. So, as I mentioned this, the report said there was no dialogue, so I could use sparks to suggest some dialogue for me to give me some ideas. Or, again, I can write it myself. So it's really kind of dependent on how much you would like to use generative AI

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: to bring to bring the story to life through the editing. So that's at the scene level. Now let's look at the page level.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So page level edits are the final step in your editing process. This is where you've finalized your story. You finalized your scene. Now we're zooming into the page level and even smaller to the sentence level to see if you're effectively telling your story, using the sentences on the page. So questions that you might ask at this point are things like, Am I showing, not telling?

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Am I over using adverbs? Have I overused passive voice? Do I have repetitive sentence structures? Do I have overly wordy sentence structures? Have I repeated myself, really that use of language, and making sure your sentences are not just accurate, but are as strong as possible to immerse your readers in your writing.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Now, a quick word of advice for this just the same way you can tinker with your story forever. You can

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: tinker with sentences forever. Any single sentence can be changed or improved in some way you could go through endless iterations of adjective, endless iterations of adverbs. What I do not want you to do is get stuck at this, you need to remember that you are aiming for your best effort and getting to a point where you are happy with the sentences.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay, let's look at an example of a page level edit that you might make. So here we have a sentence from a 1st draft. The detective walked over into the back of the hospital, looking for a piece of evidence that he could use in order to prove that a hypothesis was correct.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: That sentence is technically correct. There are no spelling mistakes, there are no grammar mistakes, it is technically correct. You could publish it just fine. However, you might decide that that sentence is overly wordy and at the page level. What you're trying to do is think, how can I tell that that story that's encapsulated in a sentence in a clearer and more effective way. So you might decide to say, the detectives search the rear of the hospital for evidence to support his hypothesis. Again.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: both are grammatically correct. Both have. No, you know, spelling errors or anything like that. The second sentence is just simpler and easier, and again clearer.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: This is the type of edit that you're looking for at the page level. How can I make sure my sentences are more effective and do more of what I'm trying to do to get readers into my story.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay, so let's look at a couple of ways to that. We can do this. So I am in the real time checker for providing aid some of the things I just mentioned. So

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: weak adjectives. We can use ancient instead of very old, so it can help with that word choice. We can say. You know there's an unnecessary comma here. We can remove that so it can fix those grammatical errors, it will find different ways of passive voice. So you can make those changes yourself. You can look for places where you have readability, errors, or spelling errors that you can change.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Again, all of these kind of things to start to make the sentence more effective. Now you can also come in here, and you can look for things like sticky sentences. So a sticky sentence is exactly this type of sentence I just showed before a sentence that is grammatically correct, but has too many glue words, too many words, making it too difficult to read. So pro writing aid will highlight your sentences that are overly wordy.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: and then it'll tell you within it, so we can see within this sentence all of those kind of extraneous words you see where it has glue words. It has all the extra words in it. You can see that 17 of the 27 s. Words in this sentence are sticky. They're unnecessary. We could reduce, remove, or replace them so you could stop at that level and rewrite the sentence yourself. Or, again, if you're more comfortable using generative AI,

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: you can have it suggest rephrases for you that either spur spur interest for you. You could use those as ideas, or you could just insert them into your document, whichever you prefer. Again, there are different ways to kind of identify that for you. And the great thing about technology in this place is it will identify those problem sentences without you having to do it. So with the touch of a button, you'll identify all of the problem sentences, and then you can decide how you want to fix them. So you don't have to spend that time figuring out. Is this sentence effective, or is this not effective?

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Again I mentioned repeats before you can look at, repeats, to find all of the frequent 8 word phrases so, for instance, in this we've said the phrase into her bag and made her way back twice in this page, which is probably too much to have in one single scene these kind of empty.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: These, excuse me, frequent 7 word phrases are things that we do not want to have more than once, cause that's going to really create that echo in in someone's mind, so we can go through and replace those so you can look at in repeats all of your repeated words or phrases and echoes. Then you can also look for how close they are to each other. So we can see. You know. For instance, we have bookshelf really close right here, landing on a bookshelf that lined one wall. The bookshelf was filled with old books.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Maybe that's fine, but maybe it's too close, and we're repeating ourselves too much. And there are ways that we can combine that sentence to make it more effective. Again, it's giving you that information that's very, very difficult for a human to do, or very, very time consuming. If you're paying in a a separate editor, it's giving you all of these different ways that you can again, improve improve the improve kind of how the construction of your sentences are.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: You can also do things like look at dialog. So there is actually very, very little dialogue in this. It's actually not even dialog. It's it's coming up as dialog, because it's in quotations. But it's it's a letter but if you did have dialogue in the document, it could tell you how many dialogue tags you have. It could tell you if those are consistent. So if you're switching between tenses, or if you're saying things like repeated frustratedly. Using those adverbs to kind of get out of the, you know, get

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: to communicate the emotions of the character when actually you should be showing that and not telling that so the technology can do all of this for you. And again, just as we were saying before, it can either just give you the information that you can work with, or if you're more comfortable, you can highlight something and then get suggestions for rephrasing to, you know. Add sensory detail to expand. You can have it, write more dialogue for you again, making the the document more effective in whatever way you would like.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay, so we're just about out of time here. And I know we've got a bunch of questions. So just to recap editing is a process I recommend moving through story level edits, then scene level, then page level in succession, focusing on specific pieces at each time.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: you can do that and by yourself. But I recommend using technology to make that process faster and easier. It's going to identify places that are very, very hard for you to see. It's going to help you create that distance and evaluate your manuscript as a reader as opposed to as a writer, it's a completely inexhaustible resource, so you can continue to use it even when you are tired, or even when your critique readers or Beta partners are not there.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: And then it also again, is much more cost effective than using a human editor. What I recommend to everyone is using technology as part of your kind of initial editing process and then bringing in some human editors later. So you've addressed a lot of those issues before you kind of come to the come to the point where you've completed your manuscript. And then, finally, the last thing to keep in mind is that using technology is a spectrum. You can use generative AI if you would like, but you also do

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: not have to use generative AI. If you're not comfortable with it, you can still get all of that information.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: just by using technology and running reports on things that you would not see.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay, with all of that being said, we've got about 10 min for questions. So let's go through as much as possible. Okay. So Beth says, I think I seem to be stuck on editing different readers give different opinions and make the editing process spin spiral out of control. How do you know when to stop.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: This is a great question, and one of the 1st things that I would say is, keep in mind who you are asking for feedback. So the 1st thing you wanna do is make sure that you're asking people who want to read in your genre. So it's really tempting to ask friends, family, who might not read crime or might not read fantasy. And so in that case, if they don't like something, or they don't resonate with it, you could just decide to discount their

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: discount their work. Another thing to think about is you know. When are you happy with this at the end of the day. It's going to be when you are happy with the story. So if you are happy with it, that is what matters at the most part. So think about, you know. Think about how. Think about who you're asking and and what they are asking. What kind of feedback you are. So you're kind of giving that context to their feedback, and then you need to stop when you are

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: comfortable. I would recommend again at least going through one phase of each of those process, each of the parts of the process. But how far you go depends on how much you want to go.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: or how you know when you're happy?

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay, someone says, can you please tell me a little bit about how the Scribner integration works. Yes. So providing aid

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: desktop everywhere on Mac and windows allows you to integrate directly into scrivener. So you can get basically get the little pro writing aid, icon. It pops up in your scrivener document. You could open it and then click the reports to see just all of the same things that I told you about before. So that's the desktop everywhere. If you would prefer to edit in a separate stage, you can also use the desktop app version, the desktop editor version which allows you to do.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Just upload your scribner at manuscript to that. So kind of depends which, if you want to be in Scribner itself, or if you want to be in the desktop editor in Scribner itself, you install desktop everywhere. And you get a little icon, and then you can click that to see all of the reports.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: someone asked, can we do story level edits? Not after. But during writing the 1st draft. No, unfortunately you can't. You might do some of that. You might do some of that.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: at the

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: at. You know this, the draft level? But unfortunately, you need to see how everything is working together in order to assess whether the story is effective or not. If you are doing it during you're not seeing the whole picture. So unfortunately, you do need to do story level edits, as after the 1st draft is completed to assess everything together. I know that that's a lot of work. Okay, so how do I differentiate a scene from a chapter? It's a great point. A scene has kind of a clear start and endpoint. It's

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: kind of like location based. So it's like

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: one of the ways you can think is like.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: If a character like enters a place and then leaves that place to go somewhere else. That's likely a scene change, but you can also think about it as as conflict happening throughout throughout the story. So I'm trying to think of an example to give you

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So within a a chapter, for almost in almost all instances create contains multiple scenes. So in a crime novel that might be, the 1st scene is when the detective arrives at the arrives at the crime scene and investigates it to see what happened.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: It ends when the detectives time at that crime scene is over. The next scene starts when we pick up with the detective at the police station, or something like that. So one of the kind of clear differentiators of seen is, if somebody goes somewhere, or again, there's some time time has lapsed, even if they're at the same place. Chapters again are tend to be containers for scenes in one place.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay, Chris asked. Is critique best option used for the entire book, chapter or story segment. I recommend using critique at the scene level right now.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: 1st of all, there's a couple of word count limits on critique. But second of all,

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: I

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: again, it's really it's really

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: supported for this kind of scene level, and looking at that like individual conflict within the scene rather than conflict over the whole book.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: roger asked how many words characters can you load into providing aid so that it reviews reports on an entire novel?

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: It really depends. It's going to depend on your Internet connection. It's going to depend on

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: just the speed of your computer. In general, you, I have seen people run prorating it on a 100,000 word document. I don't recommend that. It's gonna take a really long time, and it might look like it's broken. But it's just kind of working in the background.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: I recommend again, I recommend editing at the scene. Really kind of pulling and prorating it at the scene level. And that's where I think it's most effective for those seen and page level edits.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: okay, can do. Can the Critique report be used on an outline? It can be used in an outline. Yes, yeah, if you if you would like it to

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: just to confirm, to run a critique report, I copy and paste a single. Yes, I again recommend doing a a single scene at once. And you don't have to copy and paste. You can use it in Google docs, you can use it in scrivener, etc.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: okay, differences. I think this will be. I have time for 2 more. So the differences between the various levels of pro writing aid. So there are 3 levels. There are 3 levels and 3 subscription types at each level. So it's a little bit confusing. I'll just pull up the pricing page really quickly to show you. So there is a forever free version,

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: which edits up to 500 words at a time. You can do up to 10 rephrases per day and 3 AI sparks. You can't access critique through that, but you can again. Do 500 words at a time with free.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Once you go up to premium you get everything in free. But then you get unlimited word, count, so you can edit as many words as you'd like. You can do unlimited rephrases. So if you would like to, you can edit

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: or you can excuse me, rephrase multiple times. And then you get one critique port at that report at that time, and then premium pro is the highest level. It gives you the most of each. So you get 50 of this kind of longer rewrites, and then you get 3 critique reports a day that limit is because, you know, we don't recommend you doing the whole novel in one sitting, and we don't also recommend you doing the whole novel the whole kind of novel in one day. You're going to be looking at it day by day.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: And then you can purchase monthly, yearly or lifetime. So you can purchase monthly

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: for 30 30 pounds a month. You can. If you're in the Uk. You can do yearly, which is at 120 for the year, or you can purchase a lifetime subscription, which is 3, 99 for lifetime, premium, and 6 99 for premium pro

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: okay, I think that is all that I have to. Oh, so let me see. Sorry. One more from Harry. You mentioned that you should not make changes to the story at the story level edit. If you've identified the need for structural changes, when do you make them at the scene level. Okay? Great question, Harry. So what I would recommend during the story level is that you read the full book you jot down what you want to change.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Then you make the changes. Then you read it again and do another story level edit. So it's not the scene level change you're going to. It's kind of like start and stop in story level.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: So you make story level changes or excuse me, you read your story. You jot down all the story level changes you need to make. Then you make them. Then you read the story again to see if it's cohesive before you move on to scene if that makes sense.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: so that is that's kind of how you do it. So you're not doing it while you're editing, you're reading and then editing, if that makes sense.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: Okay, I think there are.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: I think that is all I can get through to today. Thank you all so much. If you have any other questions, please feel free to email. Hello! At pro writing aid, com. We will be happy to answer this. I'm so glad that so many of you have used this hopefully. Even if you have pro writing aid, you have.

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Hayley @ ProWritingAid: identified a number of places that you know a number of new features you can use. And for all of you happy. Yeah, happy editing. It was so great to see you. I will see you in just about an hour for a really awesome interview with Wanda Morris. So see you all very soon. Bye, everyone.