Six months of editing process shortened to four weeks. Impossible, you say? Almost. Let me explain why I had to resort to such means, how I achieved it, and what I learned in the process.
The Tight Schedule of “Your Fairytale”
“Your Fairytale” is a short-story based on the storyline I provided for the urban street game The Journey to the End of the Night which took place in June in London. I wanted to gift the short story to the participants, but because I was bound to the schedule of the game organisers, I didn’t have much time.
Until I received all input I needed and finished the first draft, it was May, and I only had four weeks left to finalise the story. If you are writing yourself, you know that this is unthinkable. If you are not writing, here’s why.
Journey to the End of the Night
London
8th of June 2024
The Traditional Editing Process
The first draft has nothing to do with the final manuscript. In between comes beta-reading, which provides rough feedback and might end up in rewriting big parts of the book. Thereafter comes content editing which is adding more relevant details and worst case restructuring the chapters. When the content is set, the author works on improving the language. This is called line-editing. And thereafter follows the proofreading and formatting.
Since each step involves someone reading and commenting on your draft, you have to plan a few weeks before you get back feedback. The waiting alone would have ruined the deadline. So I had to resolve to an unusual method.
Leveraging an AI’s speed
ChatGPT is helping me daily to get inspired, get a quick overview about a topic, collect information from the internet, or create images for my social media. However, a beta-reading report and content editing analyses specific aspects that the normal AI is not aware of. I therefore trained a custom GPT, feeding it best practices and report structures. This took me roughly a day. I uploaded my first draft and got feedback on it within seconds.
Like this, I saved 3 weeks of waiting for beta-reader replies and this doesn’t account for the time effort of recruiting them. The same for the content editing. For the line editing, I used the premium version of ProWritingAid. I saved weeks (and money) not having to rely on an editor. Yet, something unexpected happened in the process.
My Lessons Learned
You can’t ask an editor questions. At least my editor wants extra money if they have to write extensive answers to questions coming after the editing advice. ChatGPT, however, is eager to discuss everything with you. When I was unsure how it meant something or how to best incorporate it, I just asked and got more advice than an editor would ever give me. This taught me about writing, but also something else.
In every chapter, ChatGPT told me to add more emotional depth and sensory descriptions. Sure, every author has their own writing style, but it seemed like I always neglected these two points. I wondered why and realised that it’s because I don’t pay attention to my emotions and my surrounding since I am often deep in thought. I decided to become more mindful for my own sake, but also to improve my writing.
Final Reflection
It was the first time I used AI to edit a manuscript. Whether the quality is the same as a professional editor? I guess that depends on whether my knowledge on best-practices are comparable to those of the editor, since I trained the AI.
I am willing to try it again, though, because it allowed me to ask questions, saved time and money, and taught me a valuable lesson about how I perceive the world around me.
What’s your opinion on editing a manuscript with ChatGPT?
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