AutoCrit Review: Longform Nonfiction & Novel Editing

Disclaimer: not sponsored and there’s no affiliate code. I’ve just been experimenting with AutoCrit and wanted to share how it went with a longform manuscript.

We all have one: a novel or book-length nonfiction manuscript sitting in our Google Drive. (Some of us have more than one, but I digress.) The memoir that’s “almost done.” The guidebook we swore we’d publish last year. Oh, it’s there—50,000 words of potential wrapped in procrastination.

A couple of years ago I got a subscription to a new writing platform called AutoCrit, thinking it would help me finish a couple of those languishing book projects. It sounded like a cross between Scrivener and Grammarly. A place where you can organize your files and get AI-assisted help with plotting and character arcs.

Color me intrigued. Could it be a better editing tool than Grammarly? With the functionality of Scrivener?

Of course, I immediately forgot about it … until a few weeks ago when I needed to edit a book-length project. Yes, it has been through real editing by real humans. But this was a great opportunity to put AutoCrit to the test.

Why AI Struggles with Large Editing Projects

Editing a book-length manuscript isn’t like polishing a blog post. You can’t just read through it in one sitting and catch everything. And neither can AI (at least not yet with memory limitations). Whether you’re human or a machine, by page 200, you’ve forgotten line-level details from page 50. Character voices start blending together. The sheer volume of words creates confusion.

AI tools like AutoCrit help solve that problem, at least in theory. I had previously run tests on ChatGPT-4o, GPT-5, and Claude. I uploaded the same 84,000-word manuscript to all three models, and none of them did a great job. Their memory capacity just isn’t there yet, although ChatGPT-4o was able to deliver a decent chapter-by-chapter breakdown and could map out character arcs, plot lines, and motifs. (Please don’t get me started on how much worse GPT-5 performed.)

When I uploaded the same doc to AutoCrit, it surprised me with decent analysis. (Let me know if you’re interested in a full breakdown of how to use AI for book editing.)

What Makes AutoCrit Different

Unlike grammar checkers that focus on sentence-level issues, AutoCrit analyzes an entire manuscript for patterns, including pacing, dialogue, repetition, readability, and more. In my test, it handled one large file without choking and provided decent chapter-by-chapter breakdowns.

The real power seems to come from the manuscript-wide analysis. It can show you if you used a word 89 times, for example. Or that your dialogue tags are repetitive, or Chapter 12 has significantly different pacing from the rest of the book. These are the kinds of consistency issues that readers notice but might slip by when you’re editing.

In a perfect world, we’d all have a team of professional editors and test readers and our work would go through multiple layers of editing, from developmental to copy editing. However, this is reality. If you’re reading this, you probably don’t have the budget to hire eight specialized editors. That’s where AutoCrit can help you out.

Features That Matter for Longform Work

Here are the AutoCrit features you may find most useful:

Overused Words Report: This can be a wake-up call. Seeing “really,” “very,” and “quite” highlighted throughout a manuscript makes you catch the filler before it goes out. The tool doesn’t just find overused words—it shows you context and frequency, making it easy to eliminate the worst offenders.

Dialogue Analysis: Character voice consistency across 300 pages is nearly impossible to track manually. AutoCrit flags when characters sound too similar, when dialogue tags become repetitive, or when speech patterns don’t match the character’s established voice. It’s like having a continuity editor built in.

Pacing and Sentence Variety: Longform writing needs rhythm and pace to keep readers engaged. This tool identifies chapters with monotonous sentence structures or paragraphs that drone on. Personal note: this feedback helped me spot sections where I was lost in the weeds and I was able to tighten them.

Genre-Specific Analysis: AutoCrit adjusts its recommendations according to genre. So, suggestions for a thriller might be different than a romance novel, which showed a level of feedback I wasn’t expecting.

A Practical Editing Workflow

Instead of running every report at once and getting overwhelmed, I used more of a chapter-by-chapter approach:

1. First pass: Analysis. I ran a full analysis on the manuscript to create a “punch list” of major issues. This manuscript had already been to a human editor, so I looked for alignment. And yes, there was overlap between the two.
2. Chapter editing: Work through each tab. Run chapters individually through the pacing and dialogue reports. You could also check Word Choice, Repetition, and Readability.
3. Final consistency check: Run full manuscript analysis again to catch anything I missed.
4. Bonus: Run the Market Fuel report to get a sense of where your manuscript might fit in the market. I didn’t completely agree with some of its comps but its reasoning was solid IMO.

The key to not feeling overwhelmed was treating it like revision rounds. Don’t try to fix everything at once. Running through each pass one at a time, and letting each sink in, felt productive rather than overwhelming.

What AutoCrit Can’t Do (Managing Expectations)

AutoCrit won’t fix plot holes, resolve character development issues, or make creative decisions for you. It’s not a developmental editor. If your story structure is broken, you’ll still need human feedback to identify and fix those problems. I think brainstorming with a professional editor is always going to work best when there are major issues to resolve.

Another issue was related to memory. In full-draft passes, it started to get character names wrong at the end. The plot points and scenes were correct, but it seemed to “forget” some of the finer details at the end of the manuscript. It wasn’t a deal-breaker, but it was something I noticed.

It can also generate false positives with repetition. Sometimes “really” is the right word choice. Sometimes short sentences create the exact rhythm you want. Ultimately, you decide. The tool provides data, but you’re still the author making the final calls.

Is AutoCrit Worth It?

If you’re sitting on a finished manuscript you haven’t touched in a while, here’s my recommendation: upload your strongest chapter and run the basic reports. Don’t commit to anything yet—just see what it shows you.

As of this writing, AutoCrit offers a free forever plan with the basics, so you can organize your files, use digital noteboards, and run basic reports. The pro plan is priced around $30 a month (less if you pay annually) and unlocks advanced reports and member features like voice reader, communities, and workshops. (Not sponsored and I have no affiliate link!)

If having a tool like this is the difference between your manuscript sitting forever in your drive and actually finishing your book, then the math works out. Most writers spend more than that on coffee while procrastinating.

This was a little detour from our usual making money as a freelancer content, but all of us have a book project somewhere on our back burner. Why not take action toward publishing?

Let me know if you’d be interested in more book publishing content!