ProWritingAid for Fiction Writers: Which Checks Help and Which Harm Your Prose

ProWritingAid is the best editing software available for fiction writers. That's the conclusion we reached in our Grammarly vs ProWritingAid comparison, and it holds. The tool's prose analysis features go far beyond grammar checking.

But there's a problem. ProWritingAid ships with default settings designed for general-purpose writing: academic essays, blog posts, business reports. Those defaults will flag sentence fragments you wrote on purpose. They'll tell you to cut adverbs you chose deliberately. They'll penalize the short, punchy rhythms of an action scene and the long, flowing sentences of a literary passage equally.

The difference between ProWritingAid helping your novel and ProWritingAid flattening it comes down to which reports you run and how you configure them. Here's the full breakdown.

The Reports That Help Fiction

Six of ProWritingAid's reports directly improve fiction writing. These are the ones to run on every chapter.

The Style Report

This is the single most valuable report for novelists. It catches overwriting: redundant phrases ("past history," "free gift"), filler words ("very," "really," "just," "actually"), and constructions that add syllables without adding meaning ("due to the fact that" instead of "because").

Overwriting is the most common mechanical problem in fiction manuscripts. It's also the hardest to see in your own work because every word felt necessary when you typed it. The Style report gives you a second pair of eyes calibrated specifically for bloat.

One setting matters here. Under Writing Style, change the default from "General" to "Fiction." This single change adjusts the sensitivity thresholds across multiple checks. Fiction mode tolerates more sentence fragments, allows more varied sentence lengths, and relaxes some formality rules that make sense for essays but strangle narrative prose.

The Echoes Report

The Echoes report catches word repetition within close proximity. You used "dark" three times in two paragraphs. You started four consecutive sentences with "She." The word "glanced" appears six times on one page.

After your tenth reread of a chapter, you can't see these patterns anymore. Your brain auto-corrects them. The Echoes report sees them every time. It's the report that catches what revision fatigue hides from you.

Set the echo detection distance to "medium." The "close" setting catches too many false positives in dialogue-heavy scenes where characters naturally repeat each other's words. The "distant" setting misses clusters that readers will notice. Medium hits the right balance for most fiction.

The Sentence Length Report

This report generates a visual graph of your sentence lengths across a chapter. The graph itself teaches you more than any suggestion could. Long stretches of uniform-length sentences create a monotonous rhythm that readers feel even if they can't name it. A chase scene built from 25-word sentences feels sluggish. A quiet reflection built from 5-word staccato bursts feels rushed.

The graph should look varied. Short bursts mixed with longer constructions. Compression during action, expansion during introspection. If any section of the graph looks flat, that section probably reads flat too. Open it in your manuscript and vary the rhythm.

This report pairs well with pacing analysis. Sentence length is the micro-level expression of the same principle that governs scene pacing at the macro level: vary the tempo to match the emotional content.

The Overused Words Report

This report highlights generic, low-specificity words you've leaned on too heavily: "thing," "stuff," "got," "went," "nice," "good," "bad." These words aren't wrong. They're bland. They pass through the reader's mind without leaving an impression.

Fiction lives on specific language. Not "a nice house" but "a saltbox colonial with paint peeling off the shutters." Not "she got angry" but "her jaw tightened." The Overused Words report identifies where your prose defaults to vague language so you can decide, sentence by sentence, whether to sharpen it.

Note the emphasis on "decide." Not every instance needs fixing. Dialogue should use simple, common words because real people don't speak in curated vocabulary. Pacing demands some bland words because over-specifying every noun grinds the reading speed to a halt. The report shows you where the vague words cluster. Your judgment determines which ones stay.

The Readability Report

Readability scores get a bad reputation among fiction writers because the metrics were designed for non-fiction. A Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 8 doesn't mean your prose is too simple. Most bestselling commercial fiction reads at a 6th-to-8th grade level. That's not a limitation. That's clarity.

Where the Readability report helps fiction is in finding outlier passages. If your average readability is grade 7 and one paragraph scores at grade 14, that paragraph is probably tangled. You buried a clear idea in subordinate clauses and passive constructions. The score flags it. You decide how to fix it.

Genre matters here. Literary fiction tolerates higher complexity scores. Thrillers and young adult fiction benefit from lower scores. There's no correct number. There's only consistency and intentional variation.

The Sticky Sentences Report

Sticky sentences contain a high percentage of "glue words": the, is, of, was, in, it, to, that, and similar structural words that hold a sentence together without carrying meaning. A sentence like "It was the kind of thing that was going to be a problem for all of the people in the group" is almost entirely glue. It says little while using many words.

The report highlights sentences where the glue-word percentage exceeds a threshold. In fiction, these sentences are often the ones where you were thinking through what you wanted to say instead of saying it. They're placeholder constructions that survived into the final draft.

Set the sticky sentence threshold to 50% for fiction. The default 40% flags too many sentences that are structurally fine. At 50%, the report catches genuine bloat without noise.

The Reports That Harm Fiction

These reports either don't understand how fiction works or apply rules that actively damage narrative prose. Turn them off or ignore them entirely.

The Grammar Report (Partial)

The grammar checker itself is fine for catching genuine errors: subject-verb agreement, misplaced modifiers, missing articles. The problem is that it also flags intentional style choices as errors.

Sentence fragments for emphasis? Error. Starting a sentence with a conjunction? Error. Dialogue written in dialect or non-standard English? Error on every line. First-person narrators who don't speak in grammatically perfect prose? The report bleeds red.

Don't disable the grammar report entirely. Do train yourself to dismiss the fragment and conjunction warnings quickly. In ProWritingAid's settings, you can disable specific grammar rules. Turn off "Sentence Fragment" and "Starting with a Conjunction" under Grammar Preferences. Keep everything else on.

The Passive Voice Report

The blanket advice to eliminate passive voice comes from business writing guides, not fiction craft. Passive construction has specific uses in narrative: hiding the agent of an action ("The door was left open" when you don't want the reader to know who left it), matching the helplessness of a character's perspective ("She was dragged across the floor"), maintaining focus on the object rather than the subject.

A novel written entirely in active voice reads like a list of actions. "He opened the door. He walked into the room. He saw the body." That's active, technically correct, and rhythmically deadening. Passive voice, used selectively, adds variation and shifts emphasis where you need it.

If you run this report, treat it as informational only. Check that you're not using passive voice out of habit. Confirm that each passive construction serves a purpose. Then ignore the overall score.

The Transitions Report

This report checks that paragraphs begin with transitional phrases: "however," "moreover," "in addition," "consequently." It's designed for academic essays and persuasive articles where explicit logical connections matter.

Fiction doesn't work this way. Scenes transition through action, image, and implication. Starting paragraphs with "However" in a novel makes it read like a research paper. This report has zero value for fiction writers. Skip it entirely.

The Corporate Wording Report

This report flags jargon, buzzwords, and corporate language. Reasonable in concept, useless in practice for fiction. If a character works in corporate environments, they should use corporate language in their dialogue and internal monologue. A CEO character who thinks in plain vernacular instead of business-speak isn't realistic. A lawyer character who avoids legal terminology isn't believable.

Character voice requires vocabulary that matches the character. A report designed to strip professional jargon works against that goal. Ignore it.

The Acronym Report

Flags acronyms that haven't been spelled out on first use. Standard practice in technical writing. Completely irrelevant to fiction. Skip it.

Genre-Specific Settings

Different genres have different tolerances. Here's how to adjust ProWritingAid's sensitivity for the most common fiction categories.

Literary Fiction

Literary fiction uses longer sentences, more complex vocabulary, and more intentional rule-breaking than any other genre. Set the Style report to its lowest sensitivity. Raise the sticky sentence threshold to 55%. Disable the readability warnings entirely. Your audience expects density and rewards close reading. ProWritingAid's default thresholds will over-flag literary prose.

Focus the Echoes report on close-range repetition only. Literary fiction sometimes uses deliberate distant echoes for thematic resonance. The tool can't tell the difference between accidental repetition and intentional motif. Keep the detection range tight to catch the accidental kind.

Thrillers and Suspense

These genres demand lean prose and fast pacing. The Style report at default sensitivity works well here. Tighten the sticky sentence threshold to 45%. Run the Sentence Length report and look specifically for passages where the average exceeds 20 words during action sequences.

The Overused Words report matters more for thrillers than any other genre. Bland, generic language kills tension. "He ran" doesn't carry the same weight as "He bolted" or "He sprinted." The specificity of your verbs directly affects the reader's pulse rate during set pieces.

Romance

Romance readers tolerate and often enjoy lush, sensory language that other genres would call overwriting. Reduce Style report sensitivity for descriptive passages. The Echoes report matters here because romance writers tend to lean on a small vocabulary of physical descriptors. If "eyes," "lips," "heart," and "breath" each appear fifteen times per chapter, the Echoes report catches the pattern.

Keep Readability at default settings. Romance fiction sells best at accessible reading levels. Complex sentence structures create distance between the reader and the characters' emotional experience. That distance kills the intimacy the genre requires.

Fantasy and Science Fiction

Speculative fiction introduces invented terms, place names, and concepts that ProWritingAid will flag as errors. Add your invented vocabulary to the custom dictionary before running any reports. Otherwise you'll spend your entire editing session dismissing warnings about words you made up on purpose.

The Style report works well at default fiction settings for most speculative fiction. Watch the Readability report during exposition-heavy sections where you're explaining magic systems or technology. Worldbuilding exposition tends toward academic sentence construction. If a passage explaining how your magic works scores at grade 14 readability, your readers will skim it. Simplify the explanation, not the concept.

How to Use the Style Report: A Practical Workflow

The Style report is the one most fiction writers should spend time with. Here's a chapter-level workflow that gets results without burning hours.

Step 1: Run the report on one chapter at a time. Full-manuscript analysis produces an overwhelming list. Chapter-level analysis produces an actionable one. Start with your first chapter because that's where most overwriting lives. You were still finding the voice. The prose is almost always bloated compared to later chapters.

Step 2: Sort by category, not by order of appearance. Fix all the redundant phrases first. Then all the filler words. Then the vague language. Working by category trains your eye to spot each pattern. Working by order of appearance jumps between problems without building recognition.

Step 3: Accept or dismiss each flag within five seconds. If you have to think about whether to keep a word, keep it. The easy fixes are the ones where you immediately think "yes, that's bloat." If you're debating, your instinct is defending a deliberate choice. Trust that instinct.

Step 4: Re-run the report after your pass. Your fixes sometimes introduce new issues. A sentence you rewrote to eliminate a redundancy might now have a sticky-sentence problem. One more pass catches these secondary effects.

Step 5: Move to the next chapter. Repeat. After three or four chapters, you'll notice you're making the same fixes. "Just" keeps appearing. "That" clutters your subordinate clauses. "Began to" replaces direct action verbs. These are your personal writing tics. Once you identify them, you'll start catching them during drafting. This is how ProWritingAid makes you a better writer, not just a better editor.

The Settings Checklist

Open ProWritingAid's settings and make these changes before running your next manuscript analysis:

Writing Style: Change from "General" to "Fiction" (or "Creative" if Fiction isn't available in your version).

Grammar Preferences: Disable "Sentence Fragment" and "Starting with Conjunction" rules.

Echoes: Set detection distance to "Medium."

Sticky Sentences: Set threshold to 50% (adjust to 45% for thrillers or 55% for literary fiction).

Custom Dictionary: Add all character names, place names, invented terms, and genre-specific vocabulary before running reports.

Reports to Skip: Transitions, Corporate Wording, Acronym. Don't run them. They waste your time and undermine your confidence.

Reports to Run Every Time: Style, Echoes, Sentence Length, Overused Words, Sticky Sentences, Readability.

What ProWritingAid Cannot Check

ProWritingAid analyzes sentences. It doesn't understand stories. No report will tell you that your protagonist's motivation shifted between chapters without explanation. No algorithm will flag that your dialogue sounds identical across three different characters. No check will catch that your second act drags because the stakes stopped escalating in chapter fourteen.

Character voice is a craft problem, not a mechanics problem. Two characters can both speak in grammatically perfect, stylistically clean prose and still sound identical. ProWritingAid will give both of them a clean bill of health. You need your own ear and your beta readers' feedback to catch voice problems.

Pacing is structural. ProWritingAid's Sentence Length report shows micro-rhythm within scenes. It tells you nothing about whether scenes are in the right order, whether your chapter breaks land at the right moments, or whether your reader will put the book down at page 150 because nothing has changed in fifty pages.

Use ProWritingAid for what it does well: catching mechanical patterns your eyes have stopped seeing. Use human readers for everything else.

Your First Editing Pass

Open your current manuscript. Pick the chapter you're least confident about. Change your writing style to Fiction. Run the Style report. Sort by category. Set a timer for 30 minutes and work through the flags, five seconds per decision.

When the timer goes off, run the Echoes report on the same chapter. Then the Sentence Length graph. Look at the shape. Find the flat sections. Open those passages and read them aloud. Your ear will hear the monotony the graph showed you.

That's one chapter. Three reports. Under an hour. Do that for your first five chapters and you'll know exactly which of your writing tics ProWritingAid catches and which ones you need to watch for yourself. The tool gets more useful the more you learn about your own patterns. The first pass teaches you what those patterns are.