Writing Tools
The Revision Desk: Feedback That Explains Why
Submit up to 3,000 words and receive specific feedback on your craft, while keeping your dialect, rhythm and meaning.
What you can submit
- Your writing, up to 3,000 words per review, with an optional title. A longer manuscript is divided into sections for you, reviewed one at a time.
- Writing type: story, essay, poem or other.
- Audience, if you have one in mind (for example a middle-school teacher, a literary magazine, or general readers).
- Improvement goals: the areas you most want to work on.
- Assignment instructions and rubric, if you are writing to a brief. The feedback takes them into account.
- Review type: a quick review naming the three most useful improvements, or a detailed review with highlighted passages and explanations.
- On a detailed review: the type of book and where you are stuck (beginning, next scene, pacing, dialogue, character motivation, structure or ending), with an optional note in your own words.
- Preserve my dialect and creative style, which is on by default.
What you receive
- Feedback organised by craft area: grammar and spelling, clarity, repetition, style and flow, tone, and structure — objective corrections first, then optional ideas about craft.
- Most points quote a specific passage of your own writing, as you wrote it; where a passage cannot be pinpointed, the feedback is general rather than invented.
- An explanation of what could improve and why it matters, so you learn the reason rather than just being handed a change.
- An optional example covering that single passage only, for you to keep or discard.
- One or two short practice exercises based on the feedback you received.
- Your review saved to your account, so you can return to it and see how the piece develops.
What the feedback looks like
Notes connect an observation to your own lines where a passage can be pinpointed, and explain the reason behind it.
Illustrative example
From your text
“The kitchen smelled like her grandmother’s bread, so she sat down and cried.”
Craft area: imagery and pacing
The sentence moves from scent to grief very quickly. Naming the feeling can close the moment before the reader has stood in that kitchen. Letting the smell carry the moment a beat longer may let the reader arrive at the grief themselves.
Why it matters
The reader’s participation is what makes a moment land. Explaining the reason is more useful than being handed a corrected line.
Optional example
A single version of that passage, offered for you to keep or discard, using only images already in your draft.
Practice exercise
Write the same memory three times: once using only smell, once only sound, once only touch, without naming an emotion.
Who it is for
- Writers revising their own short stories, essays or chapters.
- Students working from an assignment brief and rubric.
- Poets working on line breaks, compression and imagery.
- Authors testing whether a sample chapter is doing what they intended.
Allowances
What your plan includes
- Free account
- 1 quick review per day
- Free trial
- 3 quick reviews and 1 detailed review in total
- Monthly and Annual members
- 5 quick reviews and 2 detailed reviews per day
Member allowances reset at midnight UTC and apply equally to monthly and annual members. Your remaining allowance is always shown inside the Desk, and prices are listed on the membership page.
What these tools will not do
- It will not rewrite your piece. The Desk explains and suggests, and any example revision covers a single passage only.
- It flags clear slips in spelling, punctuation and grammar as corrections to consider, but it is not a full grammar checker: it reads for craft first, and your dialect, your rhythm and your deliberate choices are never marked as errors.
- It does not detect plagiarism or AI-written text, and makes no claim about originality.
- Feedback is guidance, not a guarantee of grades, publication or results. AI output can be inaccurate or incomplete, so verify facts, quotations and citations.
- It is for adults: an account and an 18-and-over confirmation are required.
- Submissions are processed by an AI provider, so avoid sending writing you are not comfortable sharing with those services.
Read the Privacy Policy for how submissions are handled.
Common questions
How long can my submission be?
Up to 3,000 words per submission. If your piece is longer, the Desk divides it into sections for you — following your own chapter headings where you have them — and you review them one at a time, each section its own review and its own credit. Your manuscript is never cut or shortened.
Will the Desk write my assignment for me?
No. It explains what could improve and why, and names specific passages. It does not produce a substitute piece of work, and any example revision covers a single passage only.
Can it follow my assignment rubric?
Yes. If you paste your assignment instructions and rubric, the feedback takes them into account and tells you where the writing meets them and where it does not.
Will it change my dialect or cultural language?
It is instructed to preserve your dialect and creative style rather than standardise regional or cultural language. The setting is on by default and you can see everything it says about your text before deciding whether to act on it.
Is it a replacement for an editor?
No. It is a guide you can use between drafts, at any hour, to work out what is not landing yet. Editorial judgement and your own reading remain the final word.