In the first part of my editing pipeline, I talked about the quick, objective wins—tidying formatting and nailing spelling—so Jern’s finished draft is clean before we tackle anything more nuanced. This time I move into the trickier territory: grammar and consistency in a fiction voice. Rather than relying on a writing assistant that rewrites things for you, I use LanguageTool as a careful “second pair of eyes”, then tailor it so it behaves like a novel editor: it remembers what we’ve already decided to ignore for this particular book (dialect, character voice, running phrases), and it also learns our house preferences so the style stays consistent from chapter to chapter. The result is a focused report I can work through at my own pace, making every change by hand, and keeping Jern’s storytelling intact while I quietly remove the bumps that might pull a reader out of the story.
Happy reading, —Eddie.