Book editing softwareEdit your novel, pass by pass.

What to look for in book editing software

• The whole book at once. Many slips sit chapters apart: a name spelled two ways, a character gone too long.
• Your own editor. Editing is easier where the book already is.
• A measure, not a hunch. “Too many adverbs” means little without what published novels do.
• Your words stay yours. Nothing should rewrite your sentences, or read them on a server.

Falcontext does all four.

How this book editing software edits a novel

The Edit tab works in five passes, big to small. No point polishing a sentence in a scene you’re about to cut.

• Structure, by chapter: chapter lengths, pacing, chapter openings and characters gone too long.
• Scenes and dialogue: tense and point of view, head hopping, dialogue tags and continuity slips.
• Sentences: passive voice, sentence rhythm, paragraph length and readability.
• Words: adverbs, filter words, clichés, crutch words and telling emotions.
• Proofing: sound-alikes, names spelled two ways, quotes and dashes, doubled words and spacing.

A pass can check one scene, a chapter or the whole book, in seconds. Run it again, and it tells you which checks got better and which got worse. Every check, and what to do in each pass.

Your book from above

Bird’s Eye finds every chapter and scene, with its length and reading time, and shows who appears where. With Pro it adds pacing, the book’s shape and how much of each chapter is dialogue. Tick each scene off as you edit it, pass by pass.

Fix, one or all

Step from finding to finding, and each one is marked in your text. Fix changes the one you’re on; Fix all changes every one of its kind, like three straight quotes in a book of curly ones. What you leave is up to you, and a finding you ignore stays ignored.

Measured against published fiction

Each check gets a green tick, an orange triangle or a red square. Green is what most published novels do; red is beyond nearly all of them. The lines come from Google Books’ English fiction and my own count across 109 published books. How they’re set.

They’re guidelines, not rules. What stays in your book is up to you.

Slips that sit chapters apart

A checker that reads a sentence at a time can’t see a character who stands up twice, or eyes that change colour. In my newest test, a short story had 17 slips in consistency. Falcontext caught 16, with no false alarms; Grammarly’s free plan caught 2, ProWritingAid 4.

Where this book editing software works

In Word, Scrivener, Pages, LibreOffice Writer, OpenOffice and Vellum through the desktop app, on Mac and Windows. In Google Docs, Atticus, WordPress and Ellipsus through the browser extension, and in Perch’s writing pad. Fix puts a finding’s fix into your text in all of them (OpenOffice on Windows).

Book editing software, or an editor?

Software finds what rules and word lists can find: the slips, the habits, the numbers. It can’t tell you whether your middle drags for a reader, or whether an ending feels earned. That’s a reader’s job, or an editor’s. Run the software first, so their time goes on your story rather than on “the the”.

It isn’t a full spelling or grammar checker either, so keep your editor’s own on.

Free, and what Pro adds

The free plan has no time limit and no sign-up. Adverbs, passive voice, tense and point of view, dialogue tags, filter words, doubled words, spacing, unfinished sentences and duplicate paragraphs are free in full. The other checks show their icon and how much they found; Pro shows every finding, for $19.99 a year, with 14 days free.

Your manuscript stays yours

Nothing is uploaded, not even a single chapter. Your writing is never sent anywhere, and no AI is used on your writing in any way. Why there’s no AI in it.

Related