Is AutoCrit a good tool for authors? I have assessed the features, pricing, and alternatives of AutoCrit to help you answer that question.
What is AutoCrit?
AutoCrit is one of the many AI tools currently on the market to help writers and editors hone their manuscript.
Its focus is on editing, primarily copyediting with a few elements that focus on larger structural improvements and smaller line-edit improvements. This makes AutoCrit a fairly comprehensive editing tool.
AutoCrit’s Features
AutoCrit’s many features include:
Inspiration Studio
Once you’ve imported a full or partially completed manuscript, the AI knows your book well enough to make suggestions for what could happen next.
There’s a Story Builder section which can help you brainstorm ideas on plot, character and setting.
You can also ask AutoCrit to suggest changes in tone, if you don’t feel you’ve got the tone of a section right yet.
Pacing
AutoCrit will provide pacing reports to advise you as to whether certain sections of your story drag or move too fast.
Variation Reports for Sentences, Paragraphs, and Chapters
These reports will identify whether you’ve any overly long or short paragraphs and chapters, so that you can adjust accordingly, and will also report back on whether you’ve used an appropriate variety of sentence lengths to help your prose flow.
Copy-editing
AutoCrit provides reports on copyediting matter, such as adverbs, use of specific dialogue tags, tense consistency, passive indicators, clichés, redundancies, filler words, percentage of dialogue in text, repeated sentence starts, generic descriptions, POV consistency, repeated words and phrases, readability statistics and so on.
Story Analyzer
This carries out reports on both individual chapters and your entire manuscript to provide overall feedback on characters, conflict, world building, timelines and contradictions. This will help you conduct your developmental or structural edit.
The Backwards Blueprint tool can assess your story premise, genre, tropes, characters and plot beat sheets.
Visual Planning Tools
AutoCrit has notecards and notebooks to help you visualise your plot and story.
Market Fuel
The AI will identify your target readers, pre-validate story ideas for you on the basis of one chapter, and provide copy suggestions for ads, Amazon publishing, and social media.
AutoCrit Pricing
There are three price plans for AutoCrit.
Option 1: Free Version
This gives you access to:
- The online writing platform with unlimited words, noteboards and cards.
- Certain editing tools including adverbs, word choice and readability editing guidance.
Option 2: AutoCrit Pro
This is $30 per month and includes all the features above, plus:
- Enhanced summary reports with scores and recommendations.
- Comparison scores with other published authors.
- Advanced enhanced reports including pacing, dialogue and strong writing.
- Voice reader.
- Private member community including online workshops and events.
- Member discount on courses and premium events.
- AutoCrit Inspiration Studio.
- Story Analyzer and Backwards Blueprint.
- Formatting tools for ePub and PDF export.
- AutoCrit Market Fuel.
Option 3: AutoCrit Pro Annual
This is $15 per month but paid in an annual lump sum.
- This provides everything from AutoCrit Pro above, but gives you six months free if you pay annually rather than monthly.
Is AutoCrit Worth it?
The answer to whether or not AutoCrit is worth the cost will depend very much on your financial situation and what you want to get from your writing tool.
The closest tools to AutoCrit, which is designed for copyediting, appear to be ProWritingAid and Sudowrite, both of which have large user bases who love these programs.
ProWritingAid creates similar reports on your chapter and story, and contains many similar copyediting features.
Sudowrite’s speciality is in idea and text generation of your story, and AI beta reading.
Autocrit’s advantage is that it offers a selection of features designed to help with idea generation, copy editing and structural editing, so it’s a fairly complete package.
That said, online reviews suggest that ProWritingAid and Sudowrite provide somewhat superior experiences in their own specialist areas.
Both ProWritingAid and Sudowrite have free trials, which allow you to experience their programs to see if these work for you.
AutoCrit’s free trial is somewhat less clear, in that there’s a free version available which doesn’t allow you to access the software’s best features – the reports – as well as a simple online option where you can submit text to try out the Story Analyzer.
This makes it a bit harder for writers to try out AutoCrit to the same extent they can trial alternative programs.
Another area where AutoCrit doesn’t quite live up to its competitors is that a subscription doesn’t give you full access to the online courses and premium events, which require extra fees.
This makes it rather less value for money than some other tools, which add free courses to their online community to all subscribers.
AutoCrit, like Sudowrite, uses artificial intelligence for idea generation and editing suggestions, but many of these ideas can be rather clichéd and unoriginal.
There’s a risk that writers, especially new writers, can become overly dependent on software to do the heavy lifting for them, rather than learning the crafts of storytelling and creative writing, and thus end up producing fairly average novels which lack depth and individuality.
For an experienced writer who is able to distinguish between a strong suggestion and a weak one, this is less problematic. But for a beginner writer, there’s a real risk that they won’t end up developing the necessary skills to write stories that will really engage readers.
To deal with this problem, there’s an alternative programme writers may wish to consider, which can really help them develop and hone their storytelling skills.
Alternative to AutoCrit for Authors
Fictionary Storyteller software is a writing tool designed for story and structural editing, which contains an optional artificial intelligence tool, but doesn’t rely entirely on AI to work.
Storyteller online software provides a flexible structural framework for drafting and editing your novel, and the option for using AI to analyse the effectiveness of your scenes and provide feedback, but won’t go so far as to suggest story ideas or generate text.
The advantages or disadvantages here, depending on your perspective, is that Storyteller will require you to think much harder about the story you want to write and to develop your own voice. StoryTeller doesn’t provide a shortcut by suggesting story ideas for you.
What Storyteller does provide is structural guidance which can help you write and edit the strongest story possible, but it will be entirely your story, your ideas and your prose.
To use Storyteller effectively, you’ll need to learn the craft of storytelling. Fictionary has a free online community with tutorials and webinars where you can hone your writing/editing skills and learn all about story structure. The Premium subscription includes a wide variety of online courses which are all included in the price of $29 per month.
Once you’ve done this, you’re provided with tools for self-editing your scenes and story according to 38 story elements.
The optional artificial intelligence tool can give you feedback as to whether or not your scenes meet the most important of these elements.
The advantage here is that you have a clear understanding of how the AI has come to its conclusions, which means you’re free to decide whether you agree with its opinion.
And if you do agree with its opinion, you understand clearly how to deal with the issues raised, because you understand which story elements need strengthening.
Using Storyteller is a more demanding experience, which challenges you to develop your craft and write unique, individual stories. The software can help you deal with some of the most difficult parts of writing and editing a novel, including how to structure your story and scenes and how to integrate different storylines and subplots into one narrative.
Storyteller doesn’t provide you with a tool for rewriting your text, as its focus is on structural editing rather than copyediting.
If you choose Storyteller but still wish to gain access to a tool for copyediting your prose, then you’d need to look at also using a specific copy-editing tool such as ProWritingAid. This means you’d be looking at two subscriptions rather than one, but be aware ProWritingAid does have a free option which can help reduce your costs.
Storyteller offers a free 7-day trial, so I recommend checking this out to gain a more comprehensive view of all of its benefits.
Tips for Selecting the Best Editing Tool for You
Compare Your Goals to Features Offered
Consider which tool offers features most closely aligned with your goals.
If you want to learn the craft of storytelling, Fictionary is ideal.
If you want idea generation, Sudowrite is helpful.
If you want a copy-editing tool to improve your writing, Pro Writing Aid can assist.
If you want a more general program that covers all these areas, AutoCrit might be the choice for you.
Do You Want a Writing Community?
Many tools offer extensive classes and supportive communities. It’s worthwhile trialling out these communities and classes if you can, to see which offer you the most value.
If these online extras do or don’t add value to your writing process, then you can take this into account when you decide…
Consider Value For Money
Before you can decide which program offers you the most value for money, you need to decide which features are most important to you and which communities and classes you gain the most from.
If cost is no issue, then you might decide to pay for more than one subscription to make the most of the different features offered by different tools.
For most writers, however, you’ll want to decide which tool most aligns with your goals and fits within your price range.
If you love taking online classes, then AutoCrit may not be your ideal program, as most classes cost extra.
If you’ve no interest in live classes, then look for a pricing program which charges you less for opting out of this benefit. For example, a basic Storyteller subscription which doesn’t include access to live classes, costs only $14 per month.
Consider Integrations
Some tools offer integrations with other programmes. Pro Writing Aid, for example, offers both an online editor, browser extensions (Chrome, Firefox, Edge), and a desktop app for both Mac and Windows. You can integrate Pro Writing Aid with other programmes, such as Word.
AutoCrit doesn’t offer this, so it’s worth considering whether or not this is important for you.
Consider How Much Product Support is Offered
Support can be invaluable when using new software and tools, so as you look into free trials, consider how much user support you receive.
Don’t feel afraid to ask questions in the online community, or to contact the tool’s support team via email, to see how easily you get a helpful response.
Conclusion
Choosing the best editing tool for you is a personal decision.
One area which puts off many online reviewers as regards AutoCrit is a lack of clarity around how the AI is trained, many writers worry their work will be used to train up the artificial intelligence.
Given the concerns around AI and writers’ intellectual property, it’s no surprise this puts off some writers.
If you’re looking for a comprehensive editing tool that offers a wide variety of features, AutoCrit may be a decent option for you.
However, if you’re looking for more specialist tools, other options may serve you better.
The best way to decide which tool is for you is to trial out the different options for free.
One way you can do this is by accessing your free Storyteller trial, and joining the friendly online Fictionary community.