How AI Helped Me Edit

May 27, 2025•6 min read

How AI Helped Me Edit My Novel

Behind the Scenes with The Call to Witchery

You know that feeling when you finally finish your novel’s first draft?

A mix of triumph, exhaustion, and just a sprinkle of panic because now you have to edit the thing?

That was me with The Call to Witchery. Not the first draft—oh no, we were well past that. After rounds of rewriting (some scenes had seen more versions than a software update), I thought I was nearly done. Until I looked back at the early chapters and realized they didn’t match the later ones. Cue the dramatic sigh. Time to tackle consistency.

That’s when I called in reinforcements—AI, to be exact.

But not in the “AI wrote my book” way (please, no). More like: “AI helped me build a system to actually finish editing my book without losing my mind.”

Let me show you how it worked.

The Editing Journey: Stages, Stumbles, and Systems

Editing this book wasn’t one big sprint—it was a series of learning curves, aha moments, and structured stages:

First stop: Kevin, my writing coach. He walked me through the fundamentals as we prepped the early draft.
Next stop: Alice, my developmental editor. She pushed my craft deeper and helped reshape half the book.
Then: solo flight. I took what I learned and finished the rest on my own.
Final layer: AI-assisted consistency editing. This is where the magic (and spreadsheets) came in.

By the time I hit that last stage, I was proud of my story—but I knew the first half wasn’t quite holding up next to the second. That’s where AI came in and gave me a much-needed system to pull everything together.

The Consistency Problem Nobody Warns You About

Here’s a secret most first-time novelists (and even seasoned ones) eventually learn:

You get better as you go.

Your voice sharpens. Your characters deepen. Your pacing improves. Unfortunately, your readers start at the beginning, not the better half.

I needed to bring the entire manuscript up to the same level. Tone, style, emotional arcs, character voice—everything needed to feel cohesive.

Manually tracking all of that? Not a chance. So I built a system with AI’s help.

My AI-Assisted Consistency System (a.k.a. Sanity Saver)

Step 1: Build a Baseline from My Best Work

I started by identifying my strongest material—the last half of the book. I uploaded it into Claude and picked out three scenes that really captured the tone, pacing, and character work I wanted everywhere.

These became my "gold standard" examples.

From them, I created a mini style guide -- basically a cheat sheet for my own voice and story patterns.

Step 2: Analyze Characters and Scenes

Using the Story Grid methodology, I mapped out:

Character goals and motivations for each act
Scene-level turning points
Emotional beats I wanted to hit consistently

I wanted each chapter to pull its weight and feel like part of the same book—not a patchwork quilt of different drafts.
I loaded this into Claude.

Step 3: AI-Assisted Chapter Review

Armed with my blueprint, I fed each chapter into Claude and asked it to:

Compare it to my style guide and gold-standard scenes
Highlight where character voice drifted or pacing lagged
Point out any emotional beats that felt undercooked

AI didn’t do the editing for me—it just pointed out where I should focus. Like a very fast, very nerdy assistant who lives for spotting story weaknesses.

Step 4: Human Revision with a System

Once I had feedback, I:

Reviewed the AI’s suggestions with a grain of salt (some were great, some… not so much)
Revised the chapters in my own voice, using AI as a compass, not a crutch
Did a final read to smooth everything out and make sure it still sounded like me

When each chapter met my standards, I didn’t stop there—I sent the full manuscript to my copyeditor for a professional final pass. Because no matter how smart your system is, fresh expert eyes still catch what you can’t.

A Real-World Example: From Flat to Flowing

One chapter had my protagonist uncovering a pivotal piece of information. It was supposed to be big. But something felt off.

The AI flagged:

Dialogue that didn’t sound quite like her
A flat emotional reaction to a big reveal
Pacing that dragged in the middle

It suggested tightening the dialogue, raising the emotional stakes, and compressing the slower section.

I reviewed the suggestions, decided what had merit, and got to work.

I rewrote the scene in my voice, and it landed much closer to what I intended.

Before and After: What Changed?

Here’s what the AI-assisted consistency edit helped me fix:

Before:

First half noticeably weaker than the second
Character voices drifted between chapters
Emotional moments didn’t always land
Early pacing felt sluggish

After:

Stronger, more cohesive tone across the book
Consistent character voices throughout
Emotional beats that built properly across the arc
Even pacing that kept the story moving

My copy editor even commented on how clean and consistent the manuscript was—which never would’ve happened without that final AI-powered layer.

Want to Try This Yourself? Start Here

If you're thinking about using AI to help polish your manuscript, here’s what I’d recommend:

✅ Use your best scenes to build a benchmark. What’s working? Start there.
✅ Create a style guide. Think tone, dialogue, pacing—whatever matters most to you.
✅ Work one chapter at a time. It’s less overwhelming and much easier to track.
✅ Be specific in your prompts. “Compare this to my style guide” is better than “make it better.”
✅ Trust your gut. AI is a tool—not a substitute for your creative judgment.

Final Thoughts: Better Systems, Not Just Better Sentences

This wasn’t about AI replacing the creative process. It was about using it as a tool to support a clear, repeatable system—one that made me a better, more confident editor of my own work.

But to be clear: this wasn't the final step. After polishing the manuscript with my AI-assisted system, I still hired a professional copyeditor to do that last layer. Because while AI can help streamline and strengthen your work, it's not a replacement for experienced human insight.

The Call to Witchery is still fully mine—my voice, my imagination, my heart. But with AI's help, I was able to deliver a much more polished, consistent draft to my copyeditor - and together we got it ready for readers.

And for Book Two? I’m using this system from the start. Less backtracking. Fewer panicked edits. More time doing what I actually love: telling magical stories full of witches, secrets, and storms.