When writing I try to be my own editor in order to improve the quality of what I write. When I feel happy I use Hemingway to further tighten up what I have written. Normally I aim for having a score of 9 since I am not particularly hung up on being perfect. However, in the event where "perfection" is required, I am not sure what is best practice. Do I unconditionally follow all of the suggestions that Hemingway suggests or not?
One typical complaint I have comes from the number of adverbs I use. In a 1100 word piece I have used 16 of them. I fully understand the issue with them, but often I feel they work. They are part of my character and how I speak. For example "the highly successful man". The word success already implies that something is performing well, but success is not a standard/constant. I might win a lot of swimming races and be considered a success, but I would not say I am as successful as Michael Phelps. Therefore, using an adverb seems correct in this case to really emphasize the success.
I generally ignore any sentences that are yellow (hard to read but not very hard). I am unsure whether to correct them. For long sentences, this is perfectly fine, but sometimes they are short.
Whenever I try to correct every single mistake, the writing has no character. It is robotic and lacking any sort of enthusiasm. What would be the professional standard for writing a review for example? Do you be dramatic and use all the adverbs you wish to get your point across or do you strictly follow all of the grammar rules?
Answer
I'm not familiar with Hemingway, but I use a different piece of software called AutoCrit that does pretty much the same thing.
Hemingway, AutoCrit, and their competitors are not to be thought of as the golden standard. Rather, they show you areas where you might need to work on your manuscript.
For example, AutoCrit has taught me I am a master of passive voice and abusing the word "that". Those are more general ideas that are easy to follow without crippling your style (unless you want your style to be in the passive tone with the word "that" everywhere).
Adverbs are a good example of a dilemma. Stephen King has said that "The road to Hell is paved with adverbs." Mark Twain also had a strong dislike of adverbs, but I can't remember the exact quote right now. In generality, I would follow Hemingway's suggestion relating to adverbs. In your example of "highly successful," could you replace successful with a stronger word like prosperous or wealthy? However, with any editing software like this, there will be exception. Some characters might be prone to use adverbs, and you should leave those.
When using software like this, be true to the story. The goal isn't to get a perfect score. The goal is make your writing better, but at the end of the day, you are the judge of what works in your book and what doesn't. That doesn't excuse you from making styling errors, but having styling "errors" could give your book a certain feeling it wouldn't have otherwise. Take for example Cry, the Beloved Country and The Unvanquished. The former disregards all common practices for formatting and dialogue, and the latter alludes to event rather than describing them and leaves off apostrophes. AutoCrit actually had a serious of blog posts where they ran their software on popular books and found those books weren't perfect. You can find the one for The Martian here.
Here's the TL;DR:
The software is a guide.
The software can help you find your stumbling blocks (excessive word usage, adverbs, passive voice, etc.)
The software is not a gold standard
It's your book; you know what's best for it.
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