The best way to explain Master Edit is probably to view the YouTube clip below, but I'll also fill you in on the basics.
First, to use Master Edit, a block of text is pasted into the text box. After that, the program will scan for a number of different writing gotchas by simply clicking on the menu at the bottom of the page.
Weak words (was, were, look, felt, etc.) can be highlighted along with the number of times they appear.
In a similar vein, repeated phrases can be checked (this is probably one of the most useful features for me - how many times do I want 'someone searching someone's face' anyway?).
Sentence length is analyzed and displayed using different colors so you can easily see if your paragraphs are varied enough.
A lot of other features are also included, such as checking for dialogue tags, -ing words, conjunctions etc.
This isn't a tool to use at the rough draft stage, but I have found it quite useful for a final tightening of my work and to catch mistakes I would have otherwise glossed over.
Overall, I would recommend this product. For more information, the Master Edit website is: http://www.masteredit.net/
hth
I can definitely see how that repeated phrase feature would be fantastic for me. I also wish I had something that found stupid typos for me, like when I had "butter-tasting curse" instead of "bitter-tasting curse" in a short story. Or the time I wrote "nesting colon" instead of "nesting colony" at work.
ReplyDeleteGood times.
I need this. Maybe my characters will stop wincing or blushing so much. (I don't know why I use these two reaction as often as I do, but I'd love to have a computer program call me on it. Maybe I'll give my characters a better range of emotional response.) That's not a bad price for it, either. Was it easy to download?
ReplyDeleteNesting colon! hahaha!
ReplyDeleteThis looks like a great tool! Thanks for this, Susan! (Would it catch the fact that I used too many exclamation marks in this post???)
post=comment. It sure would be nice if we could edit our comments on blogger.
ReplyDeleteI agree. This does look like a great tool. I'll have to look into it.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing. :)