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Can you use AI to edit your fiction?
Editing is key to producing a polished manuscript. Whether you’re revising your story or cleaning up your novel for publication, having the right tools can make the editing process smoother, faster, and more effective.
If you want to use AI to assist with your editing, two tools you might consider are ProWritingAid and Sudowrite. In this guide, we’ll compare how each tool performs to help you decide between them.
What Is ProWritingAid?
ProWritingAid is a grammar checker and style editor designed to help writers polish their prose. It reviews your writing and gives you suggestions for how to improve it.
What Is Sudowrite?
Sudowrite is an AI writing assistant designed for fiction writers. Its features can help you organize your story, brainstorm ideas, and write prose, with the goal of helping authors overcome writer’s block.
ProWritingAid vs. Sudowrite: What’s the Difference?
By design, ProWritingAid focuses more on editing, while Sudowrite’s tools focus more on creating your story.
So can you use both for editing? And which one works better? Let’s find out.
Grammar & Spelling Checks
Typos, missing words, and more—it’s embarrassing to go to publish a manuscript, only to realize it’s plagued with errors. So which one will catch your spelling and grammar errors, ProWritingAid or Sudowrite?
ProWritingAid: Designed to catch errors.
One of ProWritingAid’s greatest strengths is its ability to catch errors like spelling and grammar mistakes. It’ll highlight the text, explain the error, and suggest a change to fix it. It also sums up your mistakes in a report, so you know exactly how many you’re dealing with and how far you have to go before you fix them all.
You don’t even have to be on the app itself to use these features—ProWritingAid integrates with other programs including Google Docs, Scrivener, and Firefox, so you can check your grammar wherever you’re drafting.
Sudowrite: Not designed to fix grammar or spelling (but it’s possible).
Unlike ProWritingAid, Sudowrite does not have built-in tools focusing on grammar and spelling—yet. It’ll show misspelled words underlined in red, which is helpful. But it’s not designed to suggest corrections or give you a report on your errors.
However, with Sudowrite’s plug-ins, the sky’s the limit for functions. You can create or use a plug-in to fix grammar or search your manuscript for other editing and revision needs.
Rewriting
Can AI tools rewrite your work to make a better manuscript? Here’s a comparison of ProWritingAid and Sudowrite for rewriting.
ProWritingAid: Can make suggestions, but not designed for rewriting.
ProWritingAid offers basic rewriting suggestions to improve clarity, avoid repetition, and unstick “sticky” sentences. You can also highlight text to get suggestions for rephrasing, or use the “Sparks” feature to get ideas for a specific purpose, like improving readability.
While it’s useful for line edits and tightening prose, ProWritingAid does not generate creative alternatives for entire paragraphs or scenes.
Sudowrite: Offers several features designed for rewriting.
Sudowrite has multiple options for creatively rewriting your text. For example, with the “Rewrite” tool, you can request to make the text shorter, more descriptive, or any custom instruction you want. With “Expand,” it’ll flesh out a passage to give it more life. And with “Quick Edit,” you can give custom instructions for how to edit a whole passage.
These tools also keep in mind your Story Bible, where you keep all your information about your story including character profiles and worldbuilding details, so the edits will fit with your vision for your story.
Reviewing Your Whole Manuscript or Chapter
Can you give an AI tool your whole manuscript to review? What about a single chapter? Let’s see what happens if you try, with ProWritingAid or Sudowrite.
ProWritingAid: Can review large texts.
With over 25 reports for you to go over, ProWritingAid can certainly give you feedback across your text. These reports can alert you to everything from overused words to problems with dialogue tags. You can also ask the program for a chapter critique, or for a whole manuscript analysis.
Some users find the sheer volume of feedback to be overwhelming and hard to wade through. ProWritingAid reports work best on documents under 10,000 words, which means you may need to take it one chapter at a time. As some ProWritingAid reviews point out, the program can get glitchy with larger amounts of text.
Sudowrite: Less robust features for reviewing your work (but it’s possible).
While Sudowrite doesn’t have ProWritingAid’s in-depth analytical tools, it does have a Feedback button that can give overall impressions of your work, acting sort of like a panel of beta readers.
Once again, you can also create or use plug-ins to provide whatever type of feedback you’re looking for. Many plug-ins exist already for analysis and feedback.
Pricing
ProWritingAid: Free plan available with tiers for priced plans, and a lifetime plan.
You can use ProWritingAid for free. But for editing a whole novel, you may not get much use out of the free version, as it has a limit of 500 words at a time.
You can pay monthly for $30 per month for Premium or $36 for Premium Pro, or save by paying yearly, which comes out to $10 per month for Premium or $12 per month for Premium Pro. You can also pay a one-time fee for lifetime use, which is $399 for Premium or $699 for Premium Pro.
Sudowrite: Free trial available, requiring payment to keep using when the trial runs out.
Sudowrite’s free trial gives you 10,000 free credits to try out the tools and see what you think. After that, you can get a Hobby & Student Plan for as low as $10 per month if you pay for a whole year up front, or $19 per month if you pay monthly. More expensive plans get you more credits. The most popular plan is Professional, which is $29 per month or $22 per month if you pay yearly. The Max plan is $59 per month, or $44 per month if you pay yearly.
Final Thoughts: Should Fiction Writers Choose ProWritingAid or Sudowrite?
Both ProWritingAid and Sudowrite offer valuable—but very different—editing support for fiction writers.
If your goal is to polish your prose, fix grammar mistakes, and analyze your writing style across a full manuscript, you may want to go with ProWritingAid.
If you're in the revision phase, working on improving scenes, rewriting passages creatively, or expanding your story's depth, Sudowrite is a powerful AI partner.
Each tool excels in its own domain. You can try out their free versions to find out which one works best for the kind of editing you’re trying to achieve.