Write Better, Faster: 5 AI Tools for Writers

If you think large language models (LLMs) are just a glorified thesaurus and search engine, it’s time to start exploring AI tools more deeply. Love it or hate it, AI and LLMs aren’t going away. As a writer, you can leverage AI productivity tools to help you tighten your workflow and manage large writing projects. As a freelance writer, it gives you an edge in delivering faster, sharper, more original copy. AI can help your writing workflow, but only if you use it with intention. Here are five ways AI tools make your projects easier.

1. Outline in Minutes Using ChatGPT + Claude

How long do you stare at a blank page or procrastinate before starting a draft? If you’re anything like me, half your time used to be spent “percolating” and waiting for inspiration to strike. Skip the blank page and use AI to sketch a structure in minutes.

How to do it:

• Open ChatGPT and feed it your working title, target audience, and desired tone.
• Follow with: “Give me a blog post outline in H2/H3 format that’s informative and actionable, aimed at [audience]. Include points backed by credible sources and provide a resource list with links at the end.”
• Once you’ve refined your outline and checked sources, switch to Claude if you have long research notes to sort through. Claude’s 100K context window allows it read and summarize longer PDFs or docs.

Pro tip: Use both. Each model has strengths and will give you slightly different results. Together, you’ll get a wider breadth of research and more angles to consider.

2. Break Through Writer’s Block with Sudowrite’s “Wormhole” Feature

Want an all-in-one brainstorming and editing partner? Try Sudowrite. It’s a subscription service, but it’s pretty affordable and you can take a free trial for a spin. Sudowrite has a writer-centric interface and creative features like a poetry generator. If you’re a longform writer, “beta feedback” gives you decent feedback from the perspective of a beta reader, so you can edit your work before it goes to editors or readers.

Tool: Sudowrite
Feature: “Wormhole” generates multiple options for your next sentence or paragraph, each in a slightly different voice or mood. It’s fun for experimenting with styles and helps you think from fresh perspectives.

Why it works: Sudowrite doesn’t write for you, but it gives you choices that help refine your voice. It’s like collaborating with a fellow writer.

3. Research Faster with Perplexity

A lot of people have switched to Perplexity AI for their search engine. If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend at least trying the free version. In my experience, it provides more robust research results and is less prone to hallucinations than other LLMs. Research can be a time-killer in nonfiction writing. Searches that used to take hours can take minutes with Perplexity.

Tool: Perplexity.ai
Why it’s better: Perplexity.ai cites authoritative sources, updates in real time, and lets you follow up with conversational search. For example, try this prompt and compare the results with ChatGPT or Claude: “What are the latest .edu studies on writing habits and productivity?”

Bonus: Perplexity links directly to .org and .gov and other trustworthy repositories by default, so there’s no need to double-check sketchy blog summaries in your results.

4. Edit with Deep Learning

Grammar tools have evolved. If you used Grammarly a few years ago, you might be surprised how much it can do now. These AI grammar tools understand style and structure to help match your voice and make your writing less robotic, even if you’ve used AI to help you draft.

Tools to combine:

• Grammarly Premium: Gold standard for catching overlooked grammar, passive voice, and tone shifts. Beware letting their AI tool rewrite your copy, though. Sometimes it goes overboard.
• Hemingway App: Useful for sentence-level clarity—perfect for tightening bloated drafts. If you over-write, this is your tool.
• Wordtune Read: Summarizes long research into digestible insights that you can cite or paraphrase properly.

Pro tip: Paste your final draft into Grammarly and fix the mechanical stuff. Then run it through Hemingway to cut fat. Finally, use Wordtune to cross-check clarity. It’s more steps, but it’ll help you catch inconsistencies.

5. Automate SEO + Keyword Insight

If you’re making a living writing, you probably do a lot of web writing. That means SEO (and GEO) research. AI gives you the tools to build client content calendars based on data rather than pulling topics out of thin air. (We’ve all been that person.)

Tools:

• SurferSEO: Plug in your target keyword, and it shows you ideal word count, semantic phrases, and real-time content gaps. This is a paid subscription, but you could build it into your rate if you do a lot of SEO work.
• Keyword Insights: Clusters thousands of keywords into content ideas, showing you what to write and when. Makes it easier to build a usable content calendar.

Workflow hack:

• Run your topic through Keyword Insights to find clusters.
• Use Surfer to build optimized outlines based on real search data.
• Load everything into Notion or Trello as a calendar, then batch-write posts using the AI workflows we’ve covered.

Despite all the doom and gloom around AI and the digital landscape, as writers, we don’t need to surrender to AI. When used intentionally, it can amplify your output and make your workflows run more smoothly. That means more work in less time, and better quality content. When you leverage AI platforms as tools and not replacements for your creativity, they can actually help you produce better work and focus your time in areas you enjoy.

What are your favorite AI tools? Any I missed here? Drop them in the comments!