How to Edit a Book with AI — Complete Guide
AI won't replace your editorial judgment, but it can execute your vision in a fraction of the time. This guide walks through the full editing workflow: from uploading your manuscript to reviewing word-level diffs to exporting a polished book.
Step 1: Prepare Your Manuscript
The editor works on a chapter-by-chapter basis, so your manuscript needs to be split into discrete chunks before you begin. There are four ways to get your text in:
- Paste directly — Copy from your word processor and paste in. Best for editing a single chapter at a time.
- Upload a file — EPUB, DOCX, PDF, or plain text. Chapters split automatically from your headings.
- Fetch from a URL — Point the importer at a page and it pulls the text in.
- Open a project — If you wrote the book in Entangled Text, the chapters are already there.
Formatting that matters
The AI reads plain text and Markdown. Before pasting, strip out headers, footers, page numbers, and any layout-specific formatting. Keep paragraph breaks, italics (using asterisks), and scene breaks (three asterisks on a line). The cleaner the input, the fewer artifacts show up in the output.
Step 2: Write Effective Editing Instructions
This is where most people go wrong. The editing instruction is the single input that determines whether the AI produces something useful or something you immediately discard. Vague instructions get vague results. Specific, targeted instructions get surgical edits.
What bad instructions look like
Make it better.
Fix everything that's wrong with this chapter.
These tell the AI nothing about your intent. "Better" according to whom? "Wrong" by what standard? The AI will guess — and it will guess generically.
What good instructions look like
Effective editing instructions name the problem, describe the desired outcome, and stay focused on one dimension of the prose at a time.
Rewrite all dialogue in this chapter to feel more natural and conversational. Characters should use contractions, interrupt each other, and leave thoughts unfinished. Remove any dialogue where a character explains something they would both already know. Keep the same plot beats — only change how people talk.
This chapter drags in the middle. Cut or condense the three paragraphs where Maya walks through the market — keep one sensory detail and move on. Shorten the conversation with the vendor to four exchanges max. The chapter should feel like it's accelerating toward the final scene, not stalling.
The tone of this chapter is too detached. Add interiority: let the reader feel what Jonah is feeling through physical sensation and fragmented thought, not through narration. When he sees the letter, his hands should shake before he understands why. The dread should be in the body, not in the summary.
Strip every description in this chapter down to its strongest image. If a paragraph uses three metaphors, keep the best one and delete the rest. Replace any instance of "orbs" with "eyes." No similes longer than half a sentence. The prose should read lean and fast, not lush.
Step 3: Pick the Right Pass
There is no model to choose — editing runs on included Kestrel AI for your plan. The lever that actually changes the result is which pass you run. Each one targets a single dimension, so the edit stays predictable and easy to review.
- De-AI cleanup — Removes AI tells and unnatural phrasing. Start here when a chapter sounds robotic or hedged.
- Tighten & trim — Cuts filler, repeats, and lines that advance nothing. Best on an overwritten chapter; it will shorten the text.
- Voice & style and Emotion & interiority — The voice-sensitive passes. Use these when the prose is technically fine but flat.
- Dialogue, POV & clarity, Pacing & tension, Scene & sensory — Targeted fixes for one craft problem at a time.
- Line edit — Sentence-level cleanup: weak adverbs, passive voice, clichés, hedging.
Step 4: Review the Diff
After the AI processes your instruction, you don't get a mystery rewrite — you get a word-level diff that shows exactly what changed. This is where the editor becomes powerful: you can see every insertion, deletion, and substitution before you commit to anything.
How to read the diff
- Green highlighted text — Additions. Words or phrases the AI inserted that weren't in your original.
- Red highlighted text (strikethrough) — Deletions. Words or phrases from your original that the AI removed.
- Unchanged text — Everything the AI left alone. This is usually the majority of the chapter if your instruction was focused.
Read through the diff like a track-changes document. Pay attention to places where the AI deleted something you liked — that's a signal to reject that specific chunk. Also watch for additions that shift meaning in ways you didn't intend.
Step 5: Accept, Reject, or Re-Edit
The diff view breaks the AI's changes into individual chunks — usually a sentence or a short paragraph. For each chunk you have three options:
- Accept — Apply this change. The AI's version replaces your original for this chunk.
- Reject — Keep your original text. The AI's suggestion is discarded for this chunk.
- Re-edit — Neither version is right. Adjust the instruction and run a new pass on just this section.
When to accept
Accept when the AI's version is clearly better: tighter pacing, more natural dialogue, a stronger image replacing a weak one. If you hesitate, read both versions aloud. The one that sounds right when spoken is usually the right choice.
When to reject
Reject when the AI has flattened something distinctive — a quirky sentence you liked, a deliberate rhythm, an unusual word choice that carries meaning. Also reject when the AI over-corrects: shortening a passage that needed its length for emotional weight, or smoothing out a character voice that was intentionally rough.
The accept-all shortcut
If you've reviewed the full diff and every change looks good, use the accept-all button to apply everything at once. This is common with focused instructions — if you asked the AI to do one specific thing and it did it well across the board, there's no need to approve each chunk individually.
Step 6: Export or Publish
Once your chapters are edited and you're happy with the text, you have several paths forward:
- Save as project — The edited text stays in Entangled Text. You can come back for additional passes, share the project, or publish it on the platform.
- Download as TXT — A plain-text export of the full manuscript. Useful as a backup or for pasting into other tools.
- Export to EPUB — A formatted ebook file ready for Amazon KDP, Apple Books, Kobo, or any distributor. Includes chapter breaks, a table of contents, and your metadata.
- Export to DOCX — A Word document formatted for editors, agents, or print-formatting tools like Vellum and Atticus.
Your work is yours. Exports use open formats (TXT, EPUB, DOCX) with no lock-in. Free-plan EPUB/DOCX include a short Entangled Text foreword and afterword (not a watermark); the KDP zip stays clean. Pro and Ultra omit those attribution pages from exported files. Compare plans.
Tips for Better Results
Use multiple focused passes
The best editing workflow isn't one pass that tries to fix everything — it's three or four passes that each focus on one thing. Run a dialogue pass first. Then a pacing pass. Then a line-level polish pass. Each pass builds on the last, and the cumulative result is far better than any single all-purpose edit.
Keep instructions under control
If your editing instruction is longer than a paragraph, it's probably trying to do too much. Split it into two separate passes. The AI handles one clear objective better than five competing ones.
Use the scan pass for consistency
Before you do any substantive editing, run a lightweight scan pass: ask the AI to flag inconsistencies, continuity errors, or repeated phrases without rewriting anything. This gives you a map of what actually needs fixing before you start making changes.
Do not rewrite anything. Read this chapter and list: (1) any continuity errors with previous chapters, (2) repeated words or phrases used more than twice, (3) paragraphs that could be cut without losing plot or character information. Return the list, not a rewrite.
Trust your ear over the AI's confidence
The AI will always produce a result. It will never say "actually, this paragraph is fine — leave it alone." That means some changes are improvements and some are lateral moves disguised as improvements. If your original version reads well when spoken aloud, keep it. The AI's edit isn't better just because it's different.
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