by Kris Maze

As a writer, I understand that tools can make a difference in my productivity. This month, I found an opportunity to access a life account for AutoCrit and, seeing that it included a 60-day trial period, I decided to try it.  Read on to see an overview of the components of this software, other writing products that have similar functionality, and the new features for 2024.

What is AutoCrit and what does it do for writers?

As I write this post, I am completely new to this software. When I heard about the new version of AutoCrit, I was skeptical. It seemed like another add-on that would distract me from writing, causing me to learn the intricacies of the platform only to abandon it after realizing it didn’t improve my writing process. But I was curious, too.

There are many claims that this set of tools can improve an author’s writing and save them time and money on editing. They say it can also help writers facing the crisis of writer’s block if they are stuck.  Another benefit of AutoCrit seems to be the working space where writers can access all these tools and resources in one place. With these promises, I had to see if it was worth the time to learn how to use it and whether it was a good value for the money.

AutoCrit is a workplace that incorporates a place to either upload or write and organize your novel. It includes various editing reports and learning forums and now offers classes for writers. This provides writers with the community, learning, and editing tools you need to take your book from concept to polished product.

It has had a big overhaul from previous versions, and we will look at a few of these in this post. There are many software products that you may have already that seem to duplicate what AutoCrit offers. But what makes AutoCrit shine is how these tools are all in one place and can be used seamlessly with the book you are working on.

Writing Software with Similar Functionality

In my experience, I have found a variety of software tools that can help in all areas of writing and developing a book.   Here are some of my personal favorites. I rely on them to make my book projects the best I can before sending them to readers. To support my 60-day trial, I wanted to explore how they overlap with functions found in AutoCrit.

Scrivener

This software program organizes your writing. It can export your work into various formats good for publishing. Scrivener is loved by many writers, but it has a steep learning curve. It is challenging to learn — so many features and a clunky interface. When they upgraded, I thought it would improve my experience, but it turned out I lost all my previous manuscripts. 

One benefit of Scrivener was the ability to create ebooks from your files.  I was never able to master that, especially since once I lost all my work. I didn’t feel like spending any more energy on it.  The software, classes, and support that I took to learn how to use it were an investment, but I think I keep going back to Word because I can get a good work flow there.

AutoCrit has clean organization and easy ways to organize plots and files. It is simple and doesn’t require a depth of learning that detracts from your writing time. This is a benefit since there is less of a learning curve in AutoCrit than is necessary to understand all the features of Scrivener. 

ProWriteAid

This is the editor I have used and enjoyed for years. Its reports give prompt feedback on chunks of my writing, helping me improve more than my grammar and spelling. It allows you to see style suggestions, finds sticky sentences, and helps you avoid redundancies. 

Many of these reports are also included in the Grammarly editing software in AutoCrit. AutoCrit has more reports that can identify beta reader–type information, looking for flaws in the story and plotline. It will read your manuscript for places where the book doesn’t make sense, like when a child picks up an action figure from the ground, but they have already put away all the toys. Or when a character shades their eyes from the lights after they were dimmed on a previous page. 

This type of feedback is a very valuable asset of the AutoCrit product, since it can help you identify simple mistakes and fix them before sending your work to human readers and editors. Having a cleaner copy can free up readers to give feedback on trickier issues.

Plottr

Plottr has more options and more variety in story structures. It also has options for keeping notes on a series. AutoCrit offers a few general beat sheets and moveable cards to plan and store information on the basic plotline of your book.

One Stop for Writers

This resource, created by Angela Ackerman and Rebeca Puglisi of the Emotional Thesaurus and other writer resource books, helps you plan and create story elements, from character flaws to plot actions that enhance the dynamics of the characters you’ve created.

AutoCrit has space to do this, but it doesn’t have the depth of character and story elements that the Thesaurus series has. It also doesn’t have the detailed structure of One Stop for Writers that can guide you through all the key pieces and details to flesh out a well-written story.

Hemingway

This online service allows you to upload a section of your writing to analyze the reading level. Hemingway is not capable of analyzing a whole book, but you can identify the reading level of a section.

AutoCrit can analyze a whole book once the chapters have been individually uploaded and checked using the dashboard reports.

Types of Reports on the AutoCrit Desktop

Analysis

This tab offers reports for fiction and nonfiction. There is a summary report that includes easy-to-read graphics with a clean interface. There is an option for a combination report as well.

Pacing & Momentum 

This report can give you critical feedback on the length and variety within your sentences.  This helps to keep a good flow in your story. Topics covered include sentence variation, pacing, paragraph variation, and chapter variation.

Dialogue

This report shares with you how much of your text is comprised of dialogue. It can compare your work to other bestsellers within your genre to give you an idea of whether you have used too much or too little conversation. It will analyze your dialogue tags and suggest stronger ones, ones using fewer adverbs, and give you a heads-up on simple tags like “he said,” to help you improve your writing.

Strong Writing  

In Strong Writing, you can see the commonly used aspects of solid prose writing and how you can improve it. The navigation through your chapters is easy to use and allows you to change or keep a suggested correction. Content under this report includes adverbs, passive indicators, tense consistency, showing vs. telling, clichés, redundancies, and unnecessary filler words. These aspects of strong writing are compared to genre bestsellers, adding interesting information for you to interpret as you see how your writing is similar to popular styles of writing.

Word Choice

This report helps you to make decisions about wording and how it could impact your reader. Add variety or watch for consistency by looking through these reports. Aspects of word choice include initial pronoun and names, sentence starters, POV consistency, generic descriptions, personal worlds and phrases (helpful for fantasy and sci-fi writers, for sure!) and power words.

Repetition

You can see how many times you have repeated words and phrases. It offers suggestions as to how many would be acceptable according to popular writers within the genre you select.

Readability

This report helps you monitor your book’s reading level. You want to make it appropriate for the audience you are trying to reach, and you want to keep a consistent reading level throughout the book.

Inspiration Studio

Stuck? This area of the Writer’s Desk can help you generate ideas. This section is AI generative and will create suggested turns and plot ideas for your book. It will not form them into your story though, so note: the writing is still all you.

Can it improve my writing skills?

When you upload a document to the desktop, you get feedback quickly. There are lots of data points and simple graphics to explain how well your chapter is written. The different types of reports give you feedback that can help you become a better writer.

The Impact of Feedback on Your Writing

In many workplaces and in education, you may have noticed the Learning Loop Process in action.  A common method for learning new concepts and deepening understanding, the Learning Loop has four stages that mark the progress you make when working on a new set of knowledge or skill set. Do you recognize these stages in your growth as a writer?

The Learning Loop

The four key elements, or stages, of the learning loop are:

• Learning – obtaining, understanding, and retaining new knowledge.
• Application – putting the knowledge learned into a context and trying it out.
• Feedback – information on how well you used the new knowledge.
• Reflection – thinking about the progress, evaluating what was learned, and planning what to learn next in the next cycle to deepen your understanding.

Writers engage in a learning loop like this all the time. We read blogs, take classes, and attend conferences to gain skills and to become better writers. Then we write and write and write some more, applying what we have learned. We get feedback from critique groups, self-editing, and beta readers. We look at the feedback and apply it to our work in progress. Then we start the cycle all over again and continue this process until the book is finished.

The Importance of Immediate Feedback

The tools in AutoCrit do have the power to provide valuable feedback to writers. The idea of immediate feedback is important. The sooner we get feedback on our project, the quicker we can apply the new knowledge, and the learning loop becomes more efficient.  That means that the faster we see our mistakes or notice patterns in our writing that are not beneficial, the sooner we can fix these issues in our manuscripts, and the less likely we will be to make the same mistakes again. This is because we have closed the loop and completed the learning process.  

This can happen with our critique groups and other human readers, but the speed and efficiency of computer editing systems has a place for teaching us how to be better writers as well. When we use the feedback from editing software, like Grammarly (the editing software used within AutoCrit) or ProWriteAid, we see improvements we can make quickly, which helps us to improve our writing skills.

Want More Information About the 2024 Version of AutoCrit?

Here is an article by Kinderpreneur.

Here is a lengthy, but informative YouTube video by an editor who is also an employee of AutoCrit. (Video is of her personal experience and use and is not sponsored by the company.)

Is AutoCrit Right for You? My Pros and Cons

This software has a clutter-free workspace that is easy to navigate. It incorporates tools from various other software commonly used by writers to plan a plot, to craft characters, to edit and analyze your work. The ability to use multiple tools in one place without uploading a document multiple times is attractive.

An area where this software shines is how it can identify flaws in the plot and pacing for the whole book. It offers beta-reader type feedback that catches simple errors that need fresh eyes. This saves the tricky stuff for your editor and human beta readers, allowing them to focus on deeper-level feedback to improve your book.

The cost may have been prohibitive for me if I were using the subscription method, but there is a free option worth trying. I was fortunate to come across it in a short window of time when they had a special offer for a lifetime account. Historically, it’s not something they do often, but you might keep an eye open if you’re interested. 

The Not-So-Final Word

It is too early for me to tell whether AutoCrit will become a cornerstone part of my writing process. I’m still finding out if this will enhance my workflow or distract from it. Overall, there are many positives to using this software and I can see many applications to my writing. In particular it has potential to streamline my productivity and to focus my writing process. 

Your turn! Tell us what you think about AutoCrit in the comments below.

What software do you use? Do you use AutoCrit? What can you share with our readers about your experience that can help us determine whether this product is right for us?

About Kris

Kris Maze, an education enthusiast with a knack for the written word, has dedicated several years to the world of academia. She writes for various publications including Practical Advice for Teachers of Heritage Learners of Spanish and award-winning blog Writers in the Storm where she is also a host.

You can find her YA fiction, writing resources, and keep up with her author events at KrisMaze.com. Find her darker, scarier fiction at her sister-site KrissyKnoxx.com.

A recovering grammarian and hopeless wanderer, Kris enjoys reading, learning languages, and spending time outdoors where she ponders the wisdom of Bob Ross.

And sometimes she tries new software.

Blue Foot, A Sci-fi Story

Ernestina Après faces the destruction of her family and her bucolic life beneath the Dome. The Silver-Waters blessings are not in her favor, despite her warnings to the Counsel that the stream and its resources are running out. Caring for a stowaway, she must find a silver-lining in her dire circumstances.

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