When I was writing Wings first go-round, i dumped mad money into three programs. Scrivener (lifetime, buy once cry once) ProWriting Aid (PRICEY and short contract of one year) and Vellum. (I don’t recall the price or period, but its still working so,,,,) Well, PWA was the clincher. It was essentially an LLM Editor program and had to be used online strictly for full functionality. Hated it. Worked, but that online thing was a major pain, AND, it didn’t like parsing in sections, it wanted the whole kit-n-kaboodle. That really slogged me down.
Wellzers,, I’m still using LLM’s this go-round. BUT, They aren’t as picky about how things go. I can cut and paste half a chapter that I’m struggling with in three different agents, get three different assesments, cherry pick the results, and cross reference the edits. Sounds slow and tedious (is, sorta) but its 4 times as fast as PWA was. Still need online access, but its not as time consuming or bandwidth eating. Only downside, there are times where Claude has limits on time and data (free version and even to some extent, and time slots, the paid, and why I stuck with free)
And no, None of the Above are writing this ‘for me’. Suggestions for clarity, or “hey, this sounds really stoopid, but if you put this first, it cleans up nicely’ type suggestions. About half the time, I listen. (ok, maybe a quarter) Oft times, I prefer ‘my voice’ over accepted practices. I do paste in stuff and say “don’t change the wording, but see if my puncuation needs cleaned up/added to.” Or, “Please spot the typos my eyes can’t see and highlight them” i’ve even tried ‘Read it back to me” and that has done wonders with how I put a paragraph together. You may not see that gap in structure, but you sure as shit hear it. (and the late great Terry Pratchet mayherestinpeace, was using Dragon to write all of his books the last few years of his life. He swore by it. I’m not at that level, (HA! As if! ) but am enjoying that sort of feedback.)
None of the LLM’s do colloquial wording, AT ALL: They want to rewrite it, every daggum time. So the Southern drawl conversations are completely on me. I hope I did them justice.
Simple shit that a hooman editor despises, but is so essential to a polished product. And I can’t tell you how many old post-apocalytic pron stories I have read that REALLY needed just basic editor skills to be good. After the 20th repeat of the same typo on ONE PAGE,,, OR an entire page of words and not one comma or period,,, yah, sometimes I just roundfiled the stuff out of frustration. I pray and make effort to not subject my readers to similar.
“Dio’s rambling again,,, Must need less coffee/more alcohol/ less Kat intervention/ all of the above”
ok, ya got me. Maybe time for a BeedoubleEdouble are you in,,,, I’d hit the harder stuff, but lord knows what T and G would do to the keyboard with me under the heavy influence. Or worse, that wacky Redhead Tammy and her rockets and jet engines,,, Lets not go down that road, (Maybe she needs her own story, but not yet. Lets stick to the plan at hand.)
“I’m backing away from the keyboard now. Things aren’t going to improve anymore tonight and there is such a thing as “too much, but-er,,,’ when writing.
Love y’all, more laters Stay curious
LLLLL!!! (, ‘)
Dio's Workshop 