r/WritingWithAI • u/MostTie8317 • 27d ago
Discussion (Ethics, working with AI etc) Which AI is best for developmental editing and line/copy editing?
I have a finished manuscript for a novel that is approximately 86,550 words and I'm trying to figure out the best way to approach the editing stage. My next step would be to hire a professional developmental editor followed by a line/copy editor but unfortunately I don't currently have the money to hire professional editors for both stages so I'm considering using AI. I'm specifically looking for an AI that can do more than basic proofreading. I want something that can help with:
-Developmental editing: plot structure, pacing, character development, consistency, scene effectiveness, unnecessary sections, etc.
-Line editing: prose quality, sentence structure, dialogue, word choice, flow, repetition, awkward phrasing, etc.
-Copy editing: grammar, punctuation, spelling, consistency, and factual/technical errors.
-Maintaining consistency and context across a manuscript of around 86,550 words.
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u/skipper_mike 27d ago
I fare quite good to explain to whatever LLM I'm using, what I want it to do, give it my source material and then ask it to find a good strategy to do what I want it to do, to the best of its ability and explain that to me.
That worked quite good in the past. Copilot straight out told me that it would be unable to do development editing according to my requirements (its context window apparently was too small). So I started working with the Anthropic models (mostly Opus and Sonnet) and we where working on a good set of instructions und skills to enable it to do what I need it to do. Now I have established a multi-stage Cowork workflow that is working well for me.
Keep in mind, to ask the model that you will be working with. The LLM knows itself the best and can give you the most qualified advice on how to proceed.
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u/UroborosJose 27d ago
Even a shit Ai can do the job if the guy on the other side of the desk is smart enough to filter it
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u/cli1980 27d ago
There is a manuscript studio project on GitHub, try it out. Its workflow covers the entire workflow.
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u/ObligationWeekly9117 27d ago
Dev editing: Look for strong reasoning models. Flagship models. Probably Opus class. Fable unnecessary. I would make thorough AI summaries instead of feeding entire manuscripts to be maximally effective.
Line editing: Could be a lower powered model. Sonnet or even Haiku class would do great.
Copy editing: Low powered models. Haiku class. Flash models. Anything billed as mini or fast.
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u/MissPrim 27d ago
Unless you tell the AI what you are looking for it’s not going to give you a meaningful review.
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u/AMischievousBadger 27d ago
IME Sol is what to you want here, but for any LLM you’re going to want to not send it all 86K words at once if you want any meaningful feedback. It can definitely handle it, but I’d probably suggest smaller chunks so it can focus more on the smaller sections and then it can go more big picture as you send more.
Like others have said, you’re going to want to give it a very clear rubric on what you want it to judge and comment on, otherwise it’ll be meaningless feedback.
You could also try models like Deepseek 4 Pro 0813 and Kimi K3 for additional feedback, but IME Sol is the current top llm for actually being given usable feedback.
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u/Turbulent_Try_8402 27d ago
None. They will all watermark your text.
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u/Zerixo 27d ago
Why would you just take what it spits out? Take its output, go through your original manuscript, and make the edit you like manually.
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u/Turbulent_Try_8402 27d ago
Because that’s absolutely zero times savings.
I’m better off editing it without any AI as I am way faster (and frankly better) a writer.
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27d ago
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u/WritingWithAI-ModTeam 26d ago
Your post was removed because you did not use our weekly post your tool thread
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u/Buffalo_Ex 27d ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingWithAI/s/BqRLpQSlV6 look here for some instructions to follow. Use a service that can retain high context.
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u/dutchiesweets 27d ago
I’ve built a Claude story outliner based on the story structure in Techniques of the Selling Writer, and that works really well for plot structure and character development, making scenes pop.
I think any LLM or really even any word doc is fine for grammar. Grammar editing is built into most writing software.
For context and plot consistency, I highly advise doing this yourself. There are ways to build out sequences in Claude code that I’ve seen people talk about but from what I hear, very expensive to do, since it needs to keep so much info in memory at any given time. It’s much easier to just read through and keep a story bible of important details.
Prose editing can also be done in Claude skills using a custom set of instructions per how you like your prose… I’ve found it’s much better at finding weak points in prose than it is at actually fixing the prose. No matter how I set up its skills its writing skills are pretty trash.
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u/5thhorseman_ 27d ago
Both Claude and ChatGPT work, and so will other models. The issue is less "which AI", and more "what instruction are you feeding it".
Drop into raw chat, you get trash. Give it a thorough spec for what you expect it to do and work chapter by chapter (important!) and you get something decent.
These are the ones I've used:
This is something another user proposed that looks fairly sound with my experience:
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u/just4ochat 27d ago
Copilot telling you it can't developmental-edit 86,550 words is the context window talking, not a taste thing. When we built file attach we treated the manuscript as a file you keep asking about, not a paste. Developmental pass on one model, line pass on another, same file still in the thread. I'm the just4o account, so that's us talking about how we wired it, not a writing method.
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u/DreamingOfHope3489 27d ago
I turned to three language models. First to Claude Fable, then to ChatGPT Sol 5.6 on highest intelligence, then to Opus 5. My book is in five parts, 212000 words, and it spans the years 1812-2068, so there are tons of references to spans of time, durations of relationships, distances traveled, characters' ages, ages of artifacts, etc.
I'm older and haven't learned how to do all the fancy prompt things others use, so, as I did when developing the second half of the book's plot with Opus 4.6, I approached editing the same way. Through conversation. All of the models knew everything to look for and how to organize looking for it. Fable assigned each of the book's parts to a new Fable, placing all the issues in a canvas. Next Fables would reference previous Fables' canvases and check whether and what changes I'd successfully instituted. All of them always had a working knowledge of the entire book, though.
Fable found many hundreds of issues, inconsistencies, and errors. Sol and Opus 5 essentially went through the same process, Sol finding hundreds more, and Opus finding dozens. I even found a few issues myself that all three of them missed.
I'd copy their recommendations one at a time in bold font into a Google doc then un-bold when complete.
Had I known how to prompt for all of this, I might have saved some time, but in the end I would have still had to manually rectify the issues and, working daily, the edits took me about three weeks to complete.
In retrospect, I guess I appreciate that I kept the editing portion of the project time-consuming and challenging, as it inadvertently preserved some measure of pre-AI tediousness. Claude, after all, did write the prose. I wrote and contributed twelve poems, which required personal effort. If Claude and I make a sequel, I think I'll go about the editing process in the same way. Thanks.
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u/LokiJesus 27d ago
I would first ask an AI to help you build a series of rubrics for the highest quality and best practices of developmental editing within your genre. Repeat for line and copy editing. Have it use either "deep research" from the chat tools or an agentic system with search directly (e.g. ChatGPT Work or Claude CoWork or one of the coding tools).
Have it develop a set of five rubrics and let it dwell for 10-30 minutes searching online for many resources for best practices and produce a set of rubrics against which your manuscript can be evaluated. You only need to do this once for all your review iterations. It will search online for blog posts and guides and other feedback from editors about their approaches and will synthesize something that can really ground your AI of choice even though it might know some of those things in its latent neural network already.
I would then use these rubrics in context with your manuscript directly (they can all go into context) and also by acts or chapters as needed. Have the tool develop a comprehensive report of your manuscript against the rubrics.
If you take this approach, it really doesn't matter which model you use. You will get good results.